Book Club Discussion: "The Reading List"

[ufcasey]

This month's book club pick is The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams.

Feel free to simply discuss your opinions of the book, or you can answer some of the questions below

1. Which books on the reading list had you read? Were any of them particular favorites of yours? Were there any titles that were new to you?

2. Aleisha tells Mukesh: “No one can ever really understand what other people have gone through. But people should try.” Do books help foster that empathy? Do the different people in this book come out at the end having greater understanding of one another because they’ve really tried? What about Mukesh and his daughters? Aleisha and Leilah?

3. How does the experience of reading help push Mukesh towards Nilakshi? Is that what Naina would have wanted for him? How does her letter at the end confirm that?

[ufcasey]

I started this book and then stopped at the 10% mark. I don't think it was the book's fault so much as it just happened to be the first book I tried to pick up after my 15 year old cat passed away unexpectedly. I just wasn't in the right headspace for reading it or anything else really. Maybe I will give it another try later.

[charlatti]

This book was really not for me. It felt like an oversimplified take on the power of books for people who don’t actually read much. Books are good! Books bring people together! Read books! It tried to take on serious issues in a way that just felt too simple and surface level. I love the premise of a list of books traveling, but the execution didn’t work for me.

I’ve read all the list books except A Suitable Boy — I’m not familiar with that one at all. ETA I haven’t read The Kite Runner in its entirety, just excerpts.

[dontlook]

I read this at the beginning of the year. I think I remember it well enough. This book was most helpful in building my own to-read list. I liked the story well enough to finish but upon review I realized how the plot holes kind of ruined the book.

A few things really bugged me:
- why didn’t we ever find out what was going on with the mom? Why was her illness a unnamed thing?
- Amir’s death almost made me put the book down. It’s the most emotional manipulative storyline I can remember in a long time.
- why does everyone want to throw a love story in every book. The budding relationship made absolutely no sense.

I liked the overall theme that books can connect us. That’s what I’m choosing to take away from this book.

Side note- I picked up The Kite Runner after reading this and sobbed like a baby. What a gut wrenching story!

[travella]

I read To Kill A Mockingbird. I honestly cannot remember any of the other books, so I must not have read them. Oh, I have Kite Runner on my TBR list, but not because of this book.

I didn't care for this book. If it hadn't been a book club book I probably would not have finished it. I can see why people want to like this book. It has a premise that resonates with many book lovers. However, the writing is flat and the story lines don't feel like they are coming together until the very end. I could not feel any real connection between or emotion from any of the characters until the very end. The book needed more of the final emotion through the entire book. I may have been able to finish it without skimming the last half had some of that shined through earlier.

[charlatti]

dontlook, yes to all your questions/issues. Those bugged me too, especially the mom’s unclear illness.

[expectantsteelerfan]

I am super late to this discussion, but this was one of the most uneven books I've read in a while. I loved the premise of the book. And I thought Mukesh's storyline was really well done. It was fleshed out...he was a widower struggling with loneliness and to figure out how to relate to his daughters and his grandchildren without the grounding presence of his wife there. I loved the way books, something he was unfamiliar with, helped him to open up, find friends, find community again, find a way to relate, etc.
But I felt like Aleisha's story was just left to flounder. I got so angry at her for not noticing what was going on with her brother. I got so angry at her situation because no children should be left alone to care for a mentally ill adult who obviously isn't capable of helping herself or her children. Why did no adult step in and force her mother to get help at some point?
I did like that the peripheral characters were mostly left to the periphery.

I had read all the books but A Suitable Boy. I did think about trying to read that one once I saw how integrated most of the books on the list were to the story, but then I looked it up and decided I didn't have it in my to force myself to read it right away, and then I was glad I didn't because that one ended up being barely mentioned.