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:

My Friends by Hisham Matar

Blurb from Goodreads

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return, a luminous novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile

The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream.

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author at the peak of his powers.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy second Monday of 2024! I hope that the first day of the week went well for everyone. I hope that everyone started the work week on a high note. I kinda understand if most of you still feel sluggish from the holiday season because I do feel the same. But it’s time to brush off that sluggishness and prop ourselves up for everything that the week has in store for us. 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. With the new year comes the time to turn in new leaves. The new year means new goals and resolutions.

Reading-wise, I have quite lofty goals; after all, I am coming off a very prolific reading year. While I yearn to soar to even greater heights, a small voice inside of me is reminding me to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground. I am setting realistic goals even though I want to ride the tide of momentum I gained in the past two years. What if 2022 and 2023 are just fever dreams that they are anomalies? I may not be able to replicate what I achieved in those years. However, a part of me also wants me to replicate my achievements in 2023 and 2022, 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. This aligns with my goal of reading more new books; new here means books released in the current year. This reading goal not only allows me to explore new releases but also allows me to venture into uncharted territories, into the oeuvre of writers I have not explored previously. I have been researching the most anticipated 2024 releases as early as November last year. Several titles stood out including Hisham Matar’s My Friends.

Before 2024, I had not heard of the American-born British-Libyan writer. I just learned that his debut novel In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the 2006 Booker Prize. Moreover, his memoir The Return won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2017 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. It seems that he has already built quite a credible literary career. These accolades make me look forward to reading his latest novel, My Friends. What compels me to read the book is that I can’t recall reading any novels about Libya before although I am familiar with the Qaddafi regime and its bloody end. I am hoping that Matar’s novel will broaden my understanding of his native country’s tumultuous contemporary history.

My Friends is set to be released tomorrow. 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!