Book for September

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

See you (and the neighborhood kids) at the pool next Sunday.

Book for August

Ice Candy Man, by Bapsi Sidhwa

Read it, now.

P.S. A very-belated thanks to Paige and Surabhi for hosting us last month at their rockin', fabulous pad. Kiitos!

Book for July

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

In June we read...

The Hungry Tide, by Amitav Ghosh.

And we met at Ekta's house. It was wonderful!

May Book Selection

Dry
Augusten Burroughs



With unconventional wit and a wonderfully weird way of looking at things, Augusten Burroughs chronicles his life on the edge after leaving his deeply eccentric foster family. Dry opens in Manhattan, where Augusten has established a life for himself as a high-paid advertising hotshot. But his past haunts him still as he tries to create a grown-up life. Dry is at times howlingly funny, devastatingly moving and, in the end, uplifting. It further establishes Burroughs as one of the most original authors writing today.

"April" Meeting

Our next meeting is on Sunday, May 6 at 12:00. We'll be lunching at Cafe Fresco's (32 Hatworks Boulevard) off Cunningham Road to discuss "Disgrace" and possibly "Kafka on the Shore" again.

Book for April

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Synopsis:
Disgrace takes as its complex central character 52-year-old English professor David Lurie whose preoccupation with Romantic poetry--and romancing his students--threatens to turn him into a "a moral dinosaur". Called to account by the University for a passionate but brief affair with a student who is ambivalent about his embraces, David refuses to apologise, drawing on poetry before what he regards as political correctness in his claim that his "case rests on the rights of desire." Seeking refuge with his quietly progressive daughter Lucie on her isolated small holding, David finds that the violent dilemmas of the new South Africa are inescapable when the tentative emotional truce between errant father and daughter is ripped apart by a traumatic event that forces Lucie to an appalling disgrace. Pitching the moral code of political correctness against the values of Romantic poetry in its evocation of personal relationships, this novel is skillful--almost cunning--in its exploration of David's refusal to be accountable and his daughter's determination to make her entire life a process of accountability. Their personal dilemmas cast increasingly foreshortened shadows against the rising concerns of the emancipated community, and become a subtle metaphor for the historical unaccountability of one culture to another.

March Meeting

We will be meeting for lunch at Schezan on Cunningham Rd. 12:30pm Sunday 1st of April to discuss 'Kafka On The Shore'.

WARNING: Reading can make you talk funny

I came across a nice piece in the Guardian today. Some readers can apparently drop the voice or accent of a favourite literary character into their daily lives. I've just finished a Salman Rushdie and I can't say any of his vocabulary has rubbed off, no dinner parties for me.

The best I can do is to attempt just reading the book in the accent intended by the writer. From the voice in my head it sounds like I'm reading a lot of Irish/Jamaican literature these days.

Book for March

'Kafka on the Shore' by Haruki Murakami

Synopsis:

15-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from home, both to escape his father's oedipal prophecy and to find his long-lost mother and sister. As Kafka flees, so too does Nakata, an elderly simpleton whose quiet life has been upset by a gruesome murder. (A wonderfully endearing character, Nakata has never recovered from the effects of a mysterious World War II incident that left him unable to read or comprehend much, but did give him the power to speak with cats.) What follows is a kind of double odyssey, as Kafka and Nakata are drawn inexorably along their separate but somehow linked paths, groping to understand the roles fate has in store for them. Murakami likes to blur the boundary between the real and the surreal—we are treated to such oddities as fish raining from the sky; a forest-dwelling pair of Imperial Army soldiers who haven't aged since WWII; and a hilarious cameo by fried chicken king Colonel Sanders—but he also writes touchingly about love, loneliness and friendship.

"An attorney by his trade is at any rate as good as a brewer, and there are many attorneys who hold their heads high anywhere."

Can You Forgive Her? - Anthony Trollope

February Meeting

We will be meeting for lunch at Inch on 100ft. Rd. Indiranagar, 1pm on Sunday 25th February.

Book for February

The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

Synopsis:

In January 1952, two young men from Beunos Aires set out to explore South America on 'La Poderosa', the Powerful One: a 500cc Norton. One of them was the twenty three year old Che Guevara.

Written eight years before the Cuban revolution, these are Che's diaries- full of disasters and discoveries, high drama, low comedy and laddish improvisations. During his travels through Argentiina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela, Che's main concerns are where the next drink is coming from, where the next bed is to be found and eho might be around to share it.

Within a decade the whole world would know his name. His trip might have been the adventure of a lifetime - had his lifetime not turned into a much greater adventure.

Prim Miss Indeed!

Librarian porn?!?!
I especially like that he still has the book in his hand.

During the 2 years I was a librarian at high school (yes I really was that weird), I can tell you that I NEVER took off my mask of respectability.

January Meeting

We will be meeting for lunch at Infinitea on Cunningham road, 1pm on Sunday 21st January.

Book for January

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

Synopsis:

Nikos Kazantzakis' most popular and enduring novel, has its origins in the author's own experiences of mining and harvesting in the Peleponnesus in the 1920s. His swashbuckling hero has its legions of literary fans across the world and his adventures are as exhilarating and havoc-making now as they were on first publication in the 1950s.