ICC Book Club

Thank you to all who attended November 2019’s book club meeting – and thank you to those that couldn’t attend as well! This was a meeting to celebrate all of us on  the book club’s 8th anniversary!  Imagine that, 8 years without a break!  I’ve told this story before, but when we started in 2011, the then ICC director told me not to have high hopes for the book club, because 90 percent of any new activity started at most institutions didn’t go beyond 2 years.  It’s a nice feeling  when you can prove people wrong!

The book club meeting was well attended, and food was in plenty. Both the real kind of food, and food for thought.   The book’s title, The Death of Vishnu didn’t quite fit the celebratory scene, but we all concluded that, despite the title,  it was  indeed a funny book, with lots of comic lines and descriptive language. In general, though, most of us were luke warm in our appreciation of the book and ratings were in the 5 to 6 range.  Some comments: there was no resolution at the end of the book;  we didn’t get to really know Vishnu;  and there were too many stereotypes in the portrayal of characters. The positives were: genuine comedy, realistic portrayal of life in a Mumbai apartment building, gorgeous descriptions of food. and generally sympathetic characters.

Our next book club meeting is on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, at 7 PM.  The book selected is Gabrielle Zevin’s “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” .

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season!  I look forward to another successful year of reading and book club meetings. See you all in 2020.

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Are you a bookworm? Do you want to be part of a group that has like-minded people who love to read and discuss your kind of books. Do you want to launch into enthralling plot line debates, argue about your favorite authors and use the book club forum to tell other readers which parts made you laugh and cry, which parts made you angry, and why the book is a must-read.

Come join ICC’s new book club – we will meet once every 2 months, talk about a variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, and maybe flavor the evening with spicy snacks and pungent arguments.

Looking for a good book? Consider one of the ICC Book Club’s past reads.

• A Place for Us – Fatima Farheen Mirza
• An Atlas of Impossible Longing – Anuradha Roy
• The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
• The Palace of Illusions – Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
• The Guide – R.K. Narayan
• Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard – Kiran Desai
• The Shadow Lines – Amitav Ghosh
• Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• Fasting, Feasting – Anita Desai
• The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
• Evening is the Whole Day – Preeta Samarasan
• Riot – Shashi Tharoor
• The Hamilton Case – Michelle de Krestser
• Such a Long Journey – Rohinton Mistry
• The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng
• Anil’s Ghost – Michael Ondaatje
• Half a Life – V.S. Naipaul
• Cracking India – Bapsi Sidhwa
• Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
• An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Golden Gate – Vikram Seth
• Brick Lane – Monica Ali
• The Lady and the Monk – Pico Iyer
• The Twentieth Wife – Indu Sundaresan
• The Enchantress of Florence – Salman Rushdie

Book recommendations gratefully accepted. The book must have a connection with the Asian sub-continent, be worthy of discussion, and preferably not exceed 350 pages.

For more information, please contact Sheila Mohan.