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 Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

Blurb from Goodreads

In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people’s lives.

History is a flood. The mighty red . . .

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.

Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can’t read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet’s mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary’s family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! Technically, it is already Tuesday; yes, I am late once again. My company’s Walk for Earth campaign has occupied most of my time lately. It did challenge me and just over the weekend, I was able to reset my personal records for 15-kilometer and 10-mile runs. It was just the second time I was able to breach these two thresholds. I feel accomplished although the morning-after pain, that is another story. Anyway, I hope everyone had a great start to the work week. I know, most of us dread Monday. Interestingly, according to my horoscope, Monday is actually my luckiest day of the week. I guess this is also why I see it as a window of opportunity to learn something new, start a new adventure, or explore new worlds. This is despite it being a day I do not look forward to.

I know most of us are feeling sluggish but it is time to slug it out, whether at school, at the office, or just at life in general. I hope everyone makes it through the week even though most of us still feel sluggish. 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 everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit. Just like that, we are already midway through the tenth month of the year. How time flies! In a matter of weeks, we will be welcoming a new year. I hope that the remaining months of the year will be filled with kindness and that it will everyone with blessings, good tidings, good news, and answered prayers. I hope that everyone gets repaid for their hard work. I hope that everyone achieves all their goals this year.

Reading-wise, October is a mixed bag as I have been reading books that simply catch my fancy. Well, not exactly. I have been alternating works that were recently published with books that are part of my ongoing reading challenges. I still have some catching up to do with some of these challenges and with the Booker Prize-shortlisted books I purchased in transit, I have my hands full. My last four reads are also works of Nobel Laureates in Literature to commemorate the prestigious literary award – considered the zenith of a writer’s career – to South Korean writer Han Kang. I am currently reading Kenzaburō Ōe’s Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! which I feel is an extension of his other I-novels, i.e., A Personal Matter and A Quiet Life.

Back to this weekly book meme. In the past few weeks, I have been featuring books that are about to be or were published this year. Last week, I featured Hiromi Kawakami’s latest translated novel, Under the Eye of the Big Bird. After featuring translated works, this week’s featured book is American writer Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Mighty Red. It was only recently that I learned about the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer’s latest novel. While The Night Watchman left so much to be desired, it turned my attention to the rest of the American writer’s oeuvre; I would, later on, read The Sentence. For The Mighty Red, I am not surprised that it deals with the concerns of Native Americans. This premise only furthered my interest in Erdrich’s works.

For now, I am hoping to obtain a copy of the book so that I can immediately immerse myself in 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!