The joy of reading books and internalising the various traits of a character is not yet lost, as many would romanticise the power of storytelling through audio-visual mediums, including television and the internet. Ladies Study Group upheld the power of reading with their 75th book discussion held at Bengal Rowing Club recently. Around 50 members of the book club analysed the book Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow written by Gabrielle Zevin and a diverse range of perspectives were thrown around in what was an intellectually stimulating conversation.
Speaking on how the book club in the heart of the city still manages to inspire the excitement of reading, Abhilasha Sethia, past president and founder of the book club, said, “I founded this book club in 2016 during my tenure as the Ladies Study Group’s President. The response was really good. Today we are 110 members, and they have been very consistent. The reason why I started the book club was I realised that people were not reading as much and they really needed to be pushed. We got so many members who were enthusiastic about this setting up of the book club. But after my tenure got over, I never really thought that this would continue for these numbers of years. Today was all about our 75th book that we have read together and I’m happy that I started this. I am an avid reader and I wanted my friends to get back into the habit of reading. We have tried to choose a different genre every time. So everyone tries pushing their boundaries. That is crucial, otherwise one only ends up reading what one likes to read. We have read all kinds of books, from fiction to non-fiction to international authors to Indian authors. We’ve also invited many authors, even during the pandemic as we kept organising meetings on Zoom. We read one book per month. And the pattern is if we are reading an Indian author this month, we will read an international author the next month. Sometimes we divide our members into six-seven groups for discussion. With every book, we choose one champion who leads the discussion forward.”
Bhawna Agarwal, the president of LSG, said, “The book club of Ladies Study Group has been a great experience for the members and we are so glad that we started it. All thanks to Abhilasha... she has put in all her hard work and enthusiasm to continue this book club for so long. Today is the 75th book we have completed, which is great, and kudos to the team for doing such an amazing job”.
And what have the readers got to say about the book?
“It’s a beautiful book. The language is like poetry and my favourite character in the book is Sam. He suffers a lot of tragedies in life; he loses his mother at a very early age and he has a devastating physical injury. Despite all of that, he is not crippled by either his personal loss or his physical pain. He rises above all those hurdles and uses the power of his mind to produce brilliant games that give a lot of pleasure and happiness to the other gamers; he’s able to satisfy himself intellectually. And this book shows us through the games that Sam and Sadie make, that life is like a game in itself in the way we have different choices we can make in a game. If we play a game wrong, we can always play it again and try to correct it. Similarly, every day is a fresh start and a new chance for us. This book teaches us no matter how hard life gets, you gave got to pick yourself up and keep moving,” said Sujata Bose, a member.
“This book has used gaming as a form of art to make it completely immersive. Gaming is used to give you a sort of liberation from all the tragedies of regular life. We are introduced to a lot of creative, inventive people in this book. They use gaming as a device. All their pains, joys, grand gestures, and hurt with romance, it is all brought out through gaming, which makes the book very fascinating with so many absolutely amazing characters,” said Sreela Mitra, committee member.
Committee member Ritu Almal said, “This book is a different genre from what we usually read and my favourite character is Marx. There are a lot of takeaways from this book. That’s why the discussion kept going on and on. Thanks to the book club, we have slipped back into reading after losing touch with books owing to our busy life. The collaborative efforts of each and every member makes every session very interactive. So many prominent authors have joined us in the past and our book discussion sessions never stopped, not even during the pandemic.”