Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is currently 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 explain why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen

Blurb from Goodreads

This Nordic Prize-winning novel, a truly gripping epic, relates the lives of four generations of a unique and strange family with touching intimacy and surreal comedy.

Traces four generations of a family marked by the untimely birth of Fred, a misfit and boxer conceived during a devastating rape who forges an unusual friendship with his younger half-brother, Barnum.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! Well, I hope it is a happy Monday considering how most of us -including me – dread the first day of the work week; unless you are in the Middle East where the work week starts on Sundays. Before we know it, we are already starting a new work week. I know, most of us are suffering from a weekend hangover. I wish the weekends were longer. I have no other choice but to put on my corporate clothes and prepare for the battle ahead of me; too bad we have no holidays in July. On the brighter side, Mondays provide windows of opportunity to start anew. It opens doors for new beginnings and for restarting. As such, I hope everyone started the work week on a high note, with renewed verve. We are given a new week to go after our goals. With this, I hope everyone started the work week on a high note.

Speaking of time, we are already halfway through July. How time flies! I can’t believe that my birth month is halfway done already. Not only that, we have already chalked up the first half of the year. I hope that the first half has been kind to and great for everyone. If it went the other way around, I hope you get to experience a reversal of fortune in the coming months. We have the remainder of the year to work on ourselves and improve aspects of our lives. We have less than six months to complete the goals we set at the start of the year. I hope the remainder of the year will be brimming with blessings, good news, and positive energy. More importantly, I hope everyone will be healthy, in mind, body, and spirit.

Opening another blogging week is a fresh Goodreads Monday update. Reading-wise, July is an extension of my foray into the vast world of European literature; I commenced this journey way back in May. Despite having read over twenty works of European writers, I have realized that I still have quite a long queue of works of European literature I wanted to read. Over the weekend, I finished reading Czech writer Ivan Klíma’s Love and Garbage and started reading Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Angel’s Game, the second book in his The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. Anyway, to align with the main reading theme, I have featured works of European literature I am looking forward to in my Goodreads Monday update.

For this week’s update, I am featuring a writer who I just learned about today. I admit my foray into Norwegian literature – well, Scandinavian literature in general – is sparse, to say the least. This year, I have read several works by Norwegian writers, the most actually I had in a year. Now, my interest is piqued by Lars Saabye Christensen. As I said, today is my first encounter with the Norwegian-Danish writer. Apparently, he is quite a prolific writer. His oeuvre is comprised of poetry collections, children’s books, novels, and even drama. He accumulated these works in a career that spanned nearly five decades. His works also earned him several accolades, particularly within European literary circles.

Among his most renowned works is The Half Brother which was originally published in 2001 in Norwegian as Halvbroren. Two years later, it was translated into English. The book was warmly received by readers and literary pundits alike, earning Saabye Christensen the Brage Prize and the Nordic Council Literature Prize. It was actually through the latter – one of the most prestigious literary prices in Scandinavia – that I learned about Saabye Christensen and his novel The Half Brother. It also won the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize for best book of the year, making Saabye Christensen the first writer to win the award twice; his first win was in 1990 for the novel Bly.

For now, the challenge is how to obtain a copy of the book. I just hope I get to obtain a copy of it. 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!