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:

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar

Blurb from Goodreads

Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other. A piercing and propulsive tour de force.

In a near-future Kolkata, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.

Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.

A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation. 

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday, everyone! I know—not many people get excited about Mondays (though I’m sure a few are out there). I, too, am not exactly a fan. Still, we push forward. After all, we’ve got to start somewhere, and Monday is one of those starting points. It provides us an opportunity to work on our goals; ironically, in any endeavor, the start is often the hardest part. As such, I hope everyone had a restful weekend and is ready for the week ahead. The weather here in the Philippines has been unpredictable. Over the weekend, it has been overcast. The same is true today. The stifling Manila heat is slowly being replaced by the holiday breeze. The holiday breeze is here to remind us that Christmas is just around the corner. The cold has resulted in the inevitable increase in cases of colds and coughs. With this, I hope everyone is doing well—mentally, emotionally, and physically—and that we all make it through (or survive) the workweek.

Time really does fly. Just like that, we’re already in the last month of the year. In a couple of days, we will be waving goodbye to 2025 and welcoming a new year. 2026 is just over the horizon. Despite the uncertainties the future holds, time keeps pressing forward—regardless of our readiness. While the future remains shrouded in uncertainty, there’s still much to look forward to. The new year brims with hope and fresh starts. I hope everything goes well for everyone in the remainder of the year. May the rest of the year be kind to us all and shower us with blessings, positivity, healing, and growth. I hope good news and kindness come knocking on your doors in the coming weeks. May you be rewarded for all the hard work you’ve put in this year. Wishing you continued success and happiness.

With the start of a new week also comes a new reading adventure, hence a fresh Goodreads Monday update. My venture into the vast landscape of American literature—and, by extension, African literature—is in full swing. This is in line with my goal of completing all my reading challenges and goals this year; the remaining books from these challenges were written by American and African writers. I have just finished Flora Nwapa’s Idu, one of the books on my 2025 Top 25 Reading List, and I am about to read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest novel, Dream Count. Idu is my first by Nwapa, while Dream Count is my third by Adichie. This also underscores my expansion into the works of Nigerian writers; I read Ben Okri’s Songs of Enchantment late last month.

Anyway, back to what this weekly meme is about. With the year drawing to a close, literary pundits and prominent publications have been releasing lists of their best reads of the year. 2025 was yet another memorable literary ride. However, there are several 2025 releases that I look forward to reading. Well, I shouldn’t say this is true with this week’s featured book, Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief. Magumdar’s debut novel, A Burning, was one of my 2022 Top 10 Books I Look Forward To list. While the book was promising, I was a little underwhelmed by the quality of writing. This is the reason why I was reluctant about her sophomore novel. However, it has been listed by several prominent literary publications as one of the best books of 2025. This made me concede and decide to give Majumdar’s oeuvre a second chance. As I have said, her stories have a promise.

However, if there is one aspect about A Guardian and a Thief that really intrigued me is that it is a work of speculative fiction, or at least it is set in the near future. This is a digression from her debut novel, which tackled contemporary political and social concerns in modern India. Majumdar takes it up a notch with her ambitious undertaking. I am hoping that it will provide her body of work with a different dimension. It is While the novel is set in the future, the concerns that it covers are prevalent in the present. It also provides an ominous prognosis of the future. Certainly, there are several reasons to look forward to the book. I sure hope I get to acquire a copy of it.

How about you, fellow readers? How was your Monday? What books have you recently added to your reading list? Drop your thoughts in the comments. For now—happy Monday, and as always, happy reading!