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:

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Blurb from Goodreads

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! It is the start of another work week. Yes. I know. It is that dreaded day of the week again. After a brief respite – aka the weekend – it is time to put our best foot forward for another tedious week at the office or at school. Most of us are still feeling sluggish but it is time to slug it out. I wish everyone had a great start to the work week no matter how out-of-the-weather everyone is feeling. I hope everyone picks up their pace, even though we can start at a slow pace and then gradually build it up as the work/school week progresses. Mondays, after all, present opportunities to start afresh and to pursue our dreams. It is an opportunity to recalibrate, redirect, or perhaps even take a new path. Whatever Monday means to you, I hope the rest of the week will go in your favor. I hope that the week will flow smoothly. More importantly, I hope that everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit.

Just like that, we are already in the final stretch of September. Indeed, the meme is right. September is going at 75 miles per hour. It seems like it was just yesterday when we greeted the ninth month of the year but in just a few days, we will already be welcoming the tenth month of the year. As we inch closer to the inevitable conclusion of this year, I hope that the remainder of the year will be kind to everyone. I hope and pray that everyone will be showered with blessings and good news. In terms of reading, September was a mixed bag. It was an extension of my foray into recently published works, a journey I commenced last August but also an immersion into books that are part of my reading challenges. After exhausting recently published books, I am currently reading Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, the 20th or perhaps 21st book from my 2024 Top 24 Reading List I read.

Regardless, for this weekly book meme, I am featuring books that have been or are about to be published this year. Among these books is Irish writer Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo. Rooney has established a reputation of being a “millennial” writer as her works examine concerns that plague the millennials. While I love the lyrical quality of her writing – I like Irish writers in general – I must say that I am not a fan of her stories. However, this has not precluded me from immersing myself in her novels. This is why I am looking forward to Intermezzo. Besides, it seems that the book’s premise is a little different from the two Rooney novels I have read. Or maybe because there is chess. I sure hope that the book is going to be better than Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You.

For now, I just hope I get to obtain a copy of the book and hopefully, soon. 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!