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Book Box | Packing list for a book club

Sep 29, 2024 12:02 AM IST

From Soviet reads to surprise novels, a book club packs a library for their Silk Route adventure—because running out of books is not an option!

Dear Reader,

PREMIUM
Book club(Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

On Saturday, we fly to Tashkent to celebrate twenty years of being a book club. Of the forty-odd book clubbers, eleven will be on board Uzbek Airlines flight 428 from Mumbai to Tashkent.

A brutish boss, surgery, a move to Sweden, and the unexpected audit of a pathology lab are some of the reasons other book clubbers have had to stay behind, but we are promising them updates on all we eat, drink and read.

The packing list for our week-long trip to the silk route stations of Tashkent-Samarkand-Bukhara begins with books. We have Uzbek reads like A Carpet Ride to Khiva, The Railway and Sovietistan.

Naturally, this is not enough. You know that feeling of panic that readers have — the fear that you will run out of reading, that you will have pockets of empty time but no books to read in them — that fear has struck me big time.

I decided to gift each book clubber a book. Thus, we will quickly have a travelling library of ten books. No time now for book buying, instead I trawl through my bookshelves for my favourite books, which I will give to my favourite book people. Here’s what I came up with.

  1. Diverse Spines for Bibliophiles - This book about books has beautiful illustrations, which makes it especially suitable for our artist book clubber, an eclectic reader and a painter who exhibits her works in Paris, Dubai and now Jehangir Art Gallery.

Diverse Spines for Bibliophiles (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

2. I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf - Another book about books, snarky and laugh out loud. This one is for the CEO. We love him because besides being a book club spouse he is also the bringer of Aslan, a beautiful white labrador who joins the book club whenever we have a meeting outdoors.

3. The Secret Miracle: The Novelists Handbook - This book is a treasure house of advice from novelists like Paul Auster, Claire Messud and Amy Tan on plotting, structure, character and overall writing. I chose it for a book club founder member, a writer and a reader who learnt Russian so he could read Dostoevsky in the original.

Directors Diaries (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

4. Directors' Diaries - Rakesh Anand Bakshi interviews twelve fellow directors and they discuss artistic inspiration, books and cinematic techniques. I picked this one for our book clubber who convinced his consultant company to let him go, so he could start a fund for art and theatre. Over the years this book clubber has introduced us to amazing artists’ stories, ranging from Amrita Shergil: A Life to This Life At Play by Girish Karnad.

5. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats - TS Eliot’s poetry and beautiful illustrations make this book a collector's prize. Anyone would love this. I decided to give my precious copy to our nature and animal lover book clubber. Every few years she writes a fantastic book on art, including a recent book on the artist Somnath Hore.

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

6. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India Through its Languages - An Indian writer of Caribbean descent who teaches at Ashoka University is the author of this fantastic book on languages. She uses poetry, pickle making and a tiramisu bear to make her points on the evolution of language. I’m certain this will be the perfect gift for a fund manager book clubber who loves languages; she is that person you encounter on WhatsApp groups dissecting the fine points of Sanskrit terms, comparing them with a Tamil word or with Bengali phrases she picked up in her years at IIM Calcutta.

7. We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal - This one is for the book club baby — the first of many babies to attend our sessions — sleeping while we swoon over The Blind Assassin, building Lego structures while we unravel Cloud Atlas. This first baby has now grown into a young woman with her own views on the world. This journal from the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will, I hope, intrigue and inspire her.

We Should All Be Feminists (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

8. Iron Widow - This riveting fantasy novel set in China is a gift for a book clubber known for being a talented tech CEO. What is less known about her, is that she is a great connoisseur of fantasy, introducing us to the racy fantasy Six of Crows.

9. Malhar in the Middle and The Girl With The Dragon Heart - For a musician who married into the book club and won our hearts when he arrived with colourful dice for a Dungeons and Dragons session for the book clubbers, here are books for him on both of these — dragons and on music.

Malhar in the Middle (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

10. The Trading Game: A Confession - And finally a racy pacy book set in Citibank for our journalist turned banking communications book clubber. She loves reading about scams and this one is set in Citibank, a rival to the bank she works at. So, all is good.

The travelling library now has graphic books, bestsellers, children’s books, poetry, memoirs and even a journal. So that’s our packing list. And oh yes, ticket printouts, passports, phones and seven sets of clothes. How many books do you pack when you go on vacation? Would love to hear.

And until next week, happy reading.

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

The views expressed are personal

Dear Reader,

PREMIUM
Book club(Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

On Saturday, we fly to Tashkent to celebrate twenty years of being a book club. Of the forty-odd book clubbers, eleven will be on board Uzbek Airlines flight 428 from Mumbai to Tashkent.

A brutish boss, surgery, a move to Sweden, and the unexpected audit of a pathology lab are some of the reasons other book clubbers have had to stay behind, but we are promising them updates on all we eat, drink and read.

The packing list for our week-long trip to the silk route stations of Tashkent-Samarkand-Bukhara begins with books. We have Uzbek reads like A Carpet Ride to Khiva, The Railway and Sovietistan.

Naturally, this is not enough. You know that feeling of panic that readers have — the fear that you will run out of reading, that you will have pockets of empty time but no books to read in them — that fear has struck me big time.

I decided to gift each book clubber a book. Thus, we will quickly have a travelling library of ten books. No time now for book buying, instead I trawl through my bookshelves for my favourite books, which I will give to my favourite book people. Here’s what I came up with.

  1. Diverse Spines for Bibliophiles - This book about books has beautiful illustrations, which makes it especially suitable for our artist book clubber, an eclectic reader and a painter who exhibits her works in Paris, Dubai and now Jehangir Art Gallery.

Diverse Spines for Bibliophiles (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

2. I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf - Another book about books, snarky and laugh out loud. This one is for the CEO. We love him because besides being a book club spouse he is also the bringer of Aslan, a beautiful white labrador who joins the book club whenever we have a meeting outdoors.

3. The Secret Miracle: The Novelists Handbook - This book is a treasure house of advice from novelists like Paul Auster, Claire Messud and Amy Tan on plotting, structure, character and overall writing. I chose it for a book club founder member, a writer and a reader who learnt Russian so he could read Dostoevsky in the original.

Directors Diaries (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

4. Directors' Diaries - Rakesh Anand Bakshi interviews twelve fellow directors and they discuss artistic inspiration, books and cinematic techniques. I picked this one for our book clubber who convinced his consultant company to let him go, so he could start a fund for art and theatre. Over the years this book clubber has introduced us to amazing artists’ stories, ranging from Amrita Shergil: A Life to This Life At Play by Girish Karnad.

5. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats - TS Eliot’s poetry and beautiful illustrations make this book a collector's prize. Anyone would love this. I decided to give my precious copy to our nature and animal lover book clubber. Every few years she writes a fantastic book on art, including a recent book on the artist Somnath Hore.

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

6. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India Through its Languages - An Indian writer of Caribbean descent who teaches at Ashoka University is the author of this fantastic book on languages. She uses poetry, pickle making and a tiramisu bear to make her points on the evolution of language. I’m certain this will be the perfect gift for a fund manager book clubber who loves languages; she is that person you encounter on WhatsApp groups dissecting the fine points of Sanskrit terms, comparing them with a Tamil word or with Bengali phrases she picked up in her years at IIM Calcutta.

7. We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal - This one is for the book club baby — the first of many babies to attend our sessions — sleeping while we swoon over The Blind Assassin, building Lego structures while we unravel Cloud Atlas. This first baby has now grown into a young woman with her own views on the world. This journal from the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will, I hope, intrigue and inspire her.

We Should All Be Feminists (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

8. Iron Widow - This riveting fantasy novel set in China is a gift for a book clubber known for being a talented tech CEO. What is less known about her, is that she is a great connoisseur of fantasy, introducing us to the racy fantasy Six of Crows.

9. Malhar in the Middle and The Girl With The Dragon Heart - For a musician who married into the book club and won our hearts when he arrived with colourful dice for a Dungeons and Dragons session for the book clubbers, here are books for him on both of these — dragons and on music.

Malhar in the Middle (Sonya Dutta Choudhury)

10. The Trading Game: A Confession - And finally a racy pacy book set in Citibank for our journalist turned banking communications book clubber. She loves reading about scams and this one is set in Citibank, a rival to the bank she works at. So, all is good.

The travelling library now has graphic books, bestsellers, children’s books, poetry, memoirs and even a journal. So that’s our packing list. And oh yes, ticket printouts, passports, phones and seven sets of clothes. How many books do you pack when you go on vacation? Would love to hear.

And until next week, happy reading.

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

The views expressed are personal

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