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:

House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk

Blurb from Goodreads

The English translation of the prize-winning international bestseller Winner of the Gunter Grass Prize

Nowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone–and everything–has a story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the its founding to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the man who causes international tension when he dies straddling the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Each of the stories represents a brick and they interlock to reveal the immense monument that is the town. What emerges is the message that the history of any place–no matter how humble–is limitless, that by describing or digging at the roots of a life, a house, or a neighborhood, one can see all the connections, not only with one’s self and one’s dreams but also with all of the universe.

Richly imagined, weaving anecdote with recipes and gossip, Tokarczuk’s novel is an epic of a small place. Since its publication in 1998 it has remained a bestseller in Poland. House of Day, House of Night is the English-language debut of one of Europe’s best young writers.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday, everyone! It is another workweek before us. Nevertheless, I hope you all had a restful weekend. I hope it prepared you for the tedious workweek ahead. I hope you were able to slow down and take a rest. I know. Mondays are not everyone’s cup of tea, or maybe coffee. It means the start of the work and academic week. Oftentimes, we feel sluggish, still weary from the weekend shindigs. I am no exception. However, viewed from a different perspective, Mondays are windows of opportunity to start afresh. It is a chance to work on our goals; ironically, the start is often the most difficult part. With this, I hope everyone is starting or has started the workweek on a high note. I hope everyone makes it through – or survives – the workweek. I wish you all the best for the week ahead.

Time does fly fast. Just like that, we are already midway through the ninth month of the year, although we are still reeling from the ghost mont,h which just started on August 23 and runs until September 21. Major life decisions – and even expenditures – are highly discouraged at this point. Anyway, time is taking its natural course, sans any regard for anyone. I hope that the notorious ghost month is going well for everyone. I hope that September is going to be a good month for everyone and that 2025 is treating everyone gently, and with kindness. I hope that as 2025 moves forward, everyone is showered with blessings, positivity, healing, and growth. I hope good news and kindness will come knocking on everyone’s doors in the coming months. I wish success and blessings for everyone. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit.

In September, I am still pursuing works of European literature, although I am going to conclude this journey this month. The primary driver for this foray into European literature is my ongoing reading challenges. I realized that several of the books I listed in my reading challenges are works of European literature. My current read, D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, however, is not part of any of these reading challenges, although I only have about three or four books from these challenges I have yet to read. Still, I am quite positive I will be able to read them before the month ends. Since I have been immersing myself in the works of European literature, I have also been featuring works of European writers in my weekly Goodreads Monday update. This week, I am featuring Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night.

Before her awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019 (although she is the awardee for 2018), I had never heard of the Polish writer. Her recognition by the Swedish Academy piqued my interest. I have since read some of her works translated into English, including the latest one, The Empusium. Each offered a different dimension of her prose. Flights and The Books of Jacob are individually compelling reads as well. It is for this rich ecosystem that I am looking forward to House of Day, House of Night. The novel was originally published in 1998 as Dom dzienny, dom nocny. Many readers have considered it her most difficult, as it is a patchwork of loosely connected stories rather than a straightforward novel. From this alone, I am assuming that the novel is similar to Flights. This then makes me wonder how challenging this novel is going to be, as they seem to share the same technical attributes.

Interestingly, House of Day, House of Night was Tokarczuk’s first novel to be translated into English in 2002. It is going to be republished by Fitzcarraldo Editions – it has recently become the home of Nobel Laureates in Literature – in December this year. I just hope I get to obtain a copy of the book, or at least that it is readily available here in the Philippines by December. 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!