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:

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Blurb from Goodreads

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! First of all, let me wish everyone a happy new year! I hope that 2024 will shower everyone with blessings and positive news. I hope that 2024 will be a year of growth and development. More importantly, I hope everyone will be healthy throughout the year.

The new year also ushers new beginnings. The new year also means new goals and resolutions. Coming off a very prolific reading year, I have a lot of reading goals this year. Still, I am grounding things to more realistic levels. I believe that 2023 was an anomaly and I may not be able to replicate what I achieved during the year. However, a part of me also wants me to replicate my achievements in 2023, if not better. I want to be optimistic – the sky’s the limit after all – but I also want my goals to be realistic and achievable. We’ll see how 2024 will shape up.

A part of my annual reading tradition is crafting a list of new releases I am looking forward to. Not only does this list feature new releases, but it also features writers whose oeuvre I have not explored previously. I have been researching the most anticipated 2024 releases as early as November last year. Several titles stood out. One of the titles that immediately piqued my interest was Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! I have not heard of Akbar previously nor have I read any of his works. I just learned that he is quite the poet; his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, A Public Space, Guernica, and Boston Review.

Moreover, Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran but is currently residing in Iowa. His provenance plays an important factor in my curiosity. Will he weave elements of his native country into his novel? I am not sure but Martyr! seems to be his first novel. Not only that, it seems that it is also his first crossover to prose. Now. this would be interesting because such crossovers can be tricky. Sure, the words would be flowery and descriptive, even lyrical, but it is not always a guarantee for a flowing story or a robust plot. I am hoping this will not be the case for Martyr! Oh, I just learned that the book explores homosexuality. This further adds a layer to the book which compels me to read it.

Martyr! is set to be released on January 23. I sure hope that it will be available here in the Philippines. 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!