Book Club January 2022- The Reading List
By: Sara Nisha Adams
Published Year: 2021
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 384
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.
Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.
When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list… hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.
What I thought
The cover is pretty and the plot seemed interesting, but I tend to be a bit apprehensive when I read books about reading. I’m good with books about book stores but books about reading tend to get too prolific for my tastes.
This book (mostly) follows Mukesh and Aleisha through their discovery of reading over the summer of 2019. Mukesh lost his wife 2 years ago and has been lost ever since. Aleisha is in the summer before she starts Uni and is working at the local library while also dealing with the struggles of her home life. What brings them together is a reading list that inspires Aleisha to start to read and the recommend the books to her new unlikely friend Mukesh.
This story is very character driven which I tend to struggle with. I don’t do well with stories where nothing happens other than character development. I was about 140 pages in and willing to give up on this book had it not been for book club. Now, I am glad that I didn’t give up. I think the final 60% of the book is much better than the first 40%. I don’t know if it’s that more stuff started happening or I finally started to connect with the characters, but I did much better with the final half of the book than the first.
The reading list is made up of a lot of classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Pride & Prejudice. I have read a few of the books on the list but not all of them. It did feel a bit like I was getting a book report every time Aleisha and Mukesh were reading the next book. They discussed the themes of the book and the different lessons they were learning from them. Sometimes it was fine, but sometimes it got a bit repetitive which annoyed me. Also nobody in the story liked Pride and Prejudice so I don’t quite understand why it as included.
Mukesh’s story might’ve been my favorite. I loved seeing him come back to life and find himself as a widower and a human being. His discovery of a love of reading and connection with his granddaughter was something that warmed my heart. Aleisha’s story was a bit more tragic and difficult to read. I’m really curious to discuss this book with people because I didn’t love it and I wonder if talking about it with others will change my opinion at all.
What Book Club Thought
I was the only one who managed to finish the book. Partly because of holiday timing but also because of the slow start the book has. It was nice that we all seemed to agree that the book was slow to start and that other members had similar feelings as I had with the parts they had read so far, but there was another book club member who really enjoyed and was only 100 pages in. She tends to prefer character driven books, so I would say that if you enjoy that type of story, this might be more of the book for you than it was for me.