Our April read was The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams. The book is set in Wembley, U.K. and framed by reading lists created by a lady named Naina in 2017. Naina, loves reading, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wishes to leave behind reading lists for some of people she encounters in her daily life, including family, friends and people she has encountered at the local library.
Naina is a book lover who knows that reading a good book can enrich a person’s life by taking that person out of his/her daily life and dropping that person into the lives of the characters found within books. Reading can be comforting, enlightening, offer the feeling of a gothic setting as in Manderley Hall in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a joyful family as in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or even chronicle the lives of characters from other parts of the world and different classes in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner which relays the experiences of young Afghan boys Amir and Hassan. Novels can also take one to other worlds, or times a situation encountered by Henry in The Time Traveler’s Wife by Niffenegger.
And so Naina, who is unnamed when introduced at the very beginning of The Reading List, places several of her reading lists where her intended readers find them; thus recruiting new readers and encouraging a few discouraged persons to find connections to other people, and other books, by reading the books on her lists. The readers are introduced both in an overview story that follows Naina’s husband/widower Mukesh and Aleisha a library clerk working at the local Harrow Road Library; and in six stories-with-the-story that give that spotlight people that have been inspired to read by encountering a copy of her reading list, or in the case of library patron Chris, were left a book to read that she believed would help him through a difficult time in his life.
The final Reading List section, and the last section of the book, reveals who the writer of the reading list was – the lade Naina, wife of newly inspired reader Mukesh. And Mukesh discovers via note she left that she was the writer of this list and hoped he’s be inspired to read and form a deeper connection with their bibliophile granddaughter Priya.
The Books on Naina’s Reading List:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Little Women by Louise May Alcott
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
And a bonus recommendation, the book her daughter’s found under their parent’s bed and which Mukesh read before he read the books on her list: Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
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The author, Sara Nisha Adams also included a list of her favorite reading titles, and they are:
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Strange Weather in Toyko by Hiromi Kawakami
The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain
There But For The by Ali Smith
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian
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The May 2023 Book Club for Adults will be meeting on Friday, May 12, 2023 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m., in the Conference Room at the library.
Our May Read is Fox Creek: A Novel by William Kent Krueger. Copies of the book will be available to pick up at the library by the end of next week – if you’re dropping by to pick up a copy before then – call the library first to make sure we have a copy for you – tel. 607-936-3713.
If you can’t find a copy of the book, let me know and I’ll make sure you get one!
And on a related note, William Kent Krueger recently gave a (LSC) author talk & discussed his latest novel – Fox Creek. The recording of the talk is accessible via the following link:
https://libraryc.org/ssclibrary/archive
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Other Great Books Recommend by Book Club Members This Past Month:
A Man Called Ove: A Novel by Fredrik Backman
Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Faith Still Moves Mountains: Miraculous Stories of the Healing Power of Prayer by Harris Faulkner
Recitatif: A Story by Toni Morrison and Zadie Smith
The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
Switchboard Soldiers: A Novel by Jennifer Chiaverini
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian
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If you’d like to request print copies of books, using your library card and PIN, just click on the following link to StarCat (the print book catalog for all Southern Tier Library System member libraries)
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And if you’d like to search for digital content check out:
The Digital Catalog (for eBooks & Downloadable Audiobooks) (Companion app: Libby)
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And Hoopla (for on-demand eBooks, audios, TV shows, movies & comic books) (Companion app: Hoopla)
https://www.hoopladigital.com/
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Have a great day,
Linda Reimer, SSCL
Email Address: reimerl@stls.org
SSCL Book Club for Adults 