Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Blurb from Goodreads

From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.

Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.

Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption.

Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! I Let us start the week with positive energy even though it is our least favorite day of the week (HAHA, I know because me too). Nevertheless, I hope everyone is doing great, in mind, body and spirit. I hope you will all have (or had) a great day and an even greater start to the week. For those who are having a challenging time, I pray and hope that you will hurdle these challenges. I hope the challenges we are all facing now will end soon.

To officially another open another blogging week, I am posting a new Goodreads Monday update. After almost two months of scouring every nook and cranny of Japan for magnificent literary pieces, I have commenced a new reading journey. For the remaining weeks of August, I am planning to read works published this year. I admit, I am a backlist type of reader although I have been trying to read more “new works” these past two (or three) years. So far this year, I have already read six new books, which is way above my average. For this Goodreads Monday update, I am featuring Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual, a book I am hoping to read before the year ends.

Earlier this year, while I was researching for books to include in my 2021 Books I Look Forward To List, I came across Light Perpetual. It was my first time encountering Francis Spufford, whose works I read before this year. Nevertheless, the book piqued my interest (although I wasn’t quite sure why). I guess the first thing that caught my attention was its premise. It does sound like a work of historical fiction (or one that will transport me back in time), which is just right at my alley. Later in the year, I learned that Light Perpetual was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. This made more even more interested to read the novel.

However, like most books in my Books I Look Forward To List, I am having a challenging time purchasing a copy of the book. Nevertheless, I am still hopeful that I will get to read it before the year ends. Fingers crossed. How about you fellow reader? What recent novel have you added to your reading list? What made you add it to your list? I hope you could share your answers in the comment box. For now, have a happy Monday!

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