The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams – 384 pages
Book Blurb:
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.
My Review: 3.5 stars
The Reading List celebrates reading, libraries and books. It also shows the power books can have over people, the decisions we make and the relationships we forge.
Mukesh, the protagonist of the story is a grieving widow that can’t let go of the last library book his wife was reading before she died, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Mukesh, not a reader, decides to read it to feel closer to her and finds himself enthralled at when he gleans from the story. On his first visit to the library to return the book, he meets a library employee Aleisha, also not a reader. She comes across a mysterious list, and slowly but surely the two of them read all the books on the list.
As they are reading and discussing the books, more copies of the list are being found by strangers that didn’t know how much they needed that list. Yes, this part was a bit predictable.
What really worked for me in this book were the book choices on the list, and how the stories affected the characters that read them. I loved how reading brought Mukesh and his grand-daughter closer. And I really enjoyed watching Mukesh grow into a confident older man. Oh, and I loved the food descriptions.
What didn’t work for me were the issues surrounding Aleisha’s family. There were too many threads to follow with her family members. I wish the author focused on either the mom’s issues or the brother’s problems, but not both. Add the dad to the equation and it just seemed forced.
In conclusion, this is a book about books and hopefully, it will encourage readers to read some of the books mentioned. I couldn’t get into Life of Pi but enjoyed the movie. This book made me want to try it again and also read a A Suitable Boy, which I’ve never read.
Quotes I liked:
She had nowhere to go, but nowhere was better than home.”
“Please try and remember that books weren’t always an escape; sometimes books teach us things. They show us the world; they don’t hide it.”
“Ba always told me that sometimes when you really like a book, you need to read it again! To relive what you loved and find out what you missed before. Books always change as the person who reads them changes too.”
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