Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is now currently being hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. 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:

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

Blurb from Goodreads

Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Inspired by Bioy Casares’s fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction’s now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Last Year at Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.

Why I Want To Read It

And it’s a new workweek again! Happy Monday everyone! That is if you find anything happy about Mondays; I am cognizant that Monday is the least favorite day of the week of most of us, including yours truly. But hey, Mondays also mean a fresh start. It means a new door, perhaps to a new opportunity. It gives us the chance to start anew. With this, I hope everyone commenced their workweek on a high note. I hope that everyone will have a productive and great week ahead. For me, it is certainly going to be a very busy week at the office as Taiwanese bank regulators are conducting their audits at the office. I just hope that everything goes smoothly.

Woah. Today is the second to the last Monday of October. In a couple of days, less than ten days, we will be welcoming a new month. How time flies! Before we know it, we will be welcoming a new year. 2024 is just over the horizon. But there is also enough time to complete all unfinished tasks, to achieve what you have set to achieve at the start of the year. Reading-wise, I have achieved one of my goals this year which is to read at least 100 books. This is just the second time I breached the three-digit mark in a year. I still have some goals I have to achieve though and I must say that I am lagging quite behind. Anyway, I hope that the rest of the year will be kind to everyone. I hope the remainder of the year will be filled with good news and blessings. More importantly, I hope everyone will be healthy in mind, body, and spirit.

To kickstart another blogging week, I am sharing a fresh Goodreads Monday update. October is slowly drawing its curtain close which means that I am about to wrap up my literary journey across Latin America; I am currently reading Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez’s latest translated novel, Our Share of Night. Overall, my foray into Latin American literature has been very interesting, to say the least; Latin American writers never fail to deliver. To align with the reading month’s main motif (I will pivot to Europe later this month) I will be featuring works of Latin American writers in my Goodreads Monday updates. For this Goodreads Monday Update I am featuring Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel.

While my first Latin American Literature Month was dominated by Chilean writers, my second one has been dominated by Argentine writers. Interestingly, prior to this year, I read only one work written by an Argentine writer, or at least one with an Argentine heritage, Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Trust. Enriquez’s Our Share of Night is the fourth novel written by an Argentine writer I read this year. I guess it comes as no surprise that I am featuring another Argentine writer in this week’s Goodreads Monday update. Actually, it was in late 2019 when I acquired a copy of The Invention of Morel but unfortunately, it was left to gather dust on my bookshelf, a fate common to books I own.

Despite this, I am looking forward to reading Casares’ short book. I have never read any of his works before and had it not been through an online bookseller, I would have not encountered him at all. Oh, I just learned that Casares was a friend and frequent collaborator with Jorge Luis Borges, another hallmark of Argentine and Latin American literature, another writer with whom I have not read any works, sadly. Anyway, I can’t wait to read The Invention of Morel which, I have also learned, was Casares’ breakthrough novel. It was his seventh book but because of the accolades it earned Casares, Casares considered it as the real start of his literary career.

How about you fellow reader? How was your Monday? What books have you added to your reading list? Do drop it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday and, as always, happy reading!