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 Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh by Ingrid Persaud

Blurb from Goodreads

This is the tale of four women.

Popo: brilliant, vulnerable and stuck. She’s determined to free herself from the traps of her past.

Mana Lala: a devoted mother – her only connection to her man is their little boy, and she will do anything to keep them close.

For Doris, well he’s glorious and once she’s licked him into shape, her husband presents an opportunity to climb the social ladder. She’s heard the awful stories, but she’s sure they won’t be hers.

Rosie just wants to mind her business, her lover, Etty, and her store.

Four lives, connected and controlled by one man: the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh. Pull up a chair and let these women tell of the man they believed could love, help or free them, and how some of them survived to tell a tale at all.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! Well, technically it should be “Happy Tuesday everyone!” It is the start of yet another workweek. I know. Most of us are not looking forward to Mondays because most of us are suffering from a weekend hangover. How I wish weekends were longer, even just for a day; one day is for resting, another for completing household chores, and the last day to pursue things that we are passionate about. But then again, this is our reality. We have no choice but to conform with society’s expectations. We have to pick up our energies quickly because we still have a long week to go. As such, I hope everyone started the workweek on a high note. I know it is going to be a tedious one but I am looking forward to what the week has in store. On the other hand, Mondays, present new opportunities to learn, start a new adventure, or even explore new worlds. I hope everyone will be able to gradually build momentum as the week moves forward. I hope everyone makes it through the week. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit.

Time does fly fast. Just like that, we have already entered the second week of December. We are nearly halfway through the last month of they year. Before we know it, we will already be welcoming the new year. I hope that 2024 has been good and that the remaining days of the year will be filled with kindness, blessings, and good tidings. I hope your prayers get answered or that you at least achieve a sense of clarity for anything ambiguous. I hope that everyone gets repaid for their hard work. I hope that everyone achieves all their goals this year. With several reading challenges still ongoing, my December reading journey was shaped by books from these challenges. There is, I guess, nothing new with me cramming toward the end of the year. With my 2024 Top 24 Reading List done, I am focusing on the remaining five books on my 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge. My current read, Corban Addison’s The Tears of Dark Water is the second to the last book from my Beat the Backlist Challenge so I can conclude that I am on track.

Back to this weekly book meme. With no specific reading theme in the past few months, the books I have been featuring on this weekly update are an eclectic mix. Some share some similarities. For one, they were all published this year, or at least their English translations were released this year. Some are books that are listed as among the best novels of 2024 by literary pundits and magazines; I have been scavenging such lists to look for books that I can include in my perpetually growing reading list. Among the books I encountered in such lists is Ingrid Persaud’s The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh. Before this year, I had never encountered the Trinidadian writer but the book immediately piqued my interest. For one, the promise of reading a work by a Caribbean writer reeled me in. I admit I haven’t read that many works by Trinidadian writers; perhaps the most prominent of those I read is Sir V.S. Naipaul.

Anyway, I am also intrigued by the premise of Persaud’s sophomore novel. It is a work of historical fiction and is built around a prominent Trinidadian figure. Boysie Singh. He is prominent for all the wrong reasons. He is a gangster and a chronic gambler who wreaked havoc across Trinidad and Tobago until he was executed on August 20, 1957. Sure, it is safe to assume that the novel is quite dark but I am pinning hope in the novel providing me more historical context about a country I rarely encounter in literature. This is one of the facets of literature that I really enjoy, being able to learn more about other countries, and their people, history, and culture. For now, I just hope I get to obtain a copy of the book; there are several works of Caribbean writers I have been hoping to obtain in the past few years but they are rarely available here in the Philippines.

How was your Monday, Tuesday rather? 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!