Tag Archives: book club

New Delhi Book Club Does Door County

As an international teacher, I sometimes struggle to find friends who are not international teachers. My teacher friends are great, don’t get me wrong, but I also love to learn the stories of interesting people with experiences quite different from my own.

That’s why I felt particularly fortunate to join a small book club in New Delhi comprising a diverse group of fascinating ladies – a nurse, an actress, a scientist, a dancer … and more. We met monthly to discuss and recommend (or not) whatever each of us had read recently, and we maintained a lending library of books donated by the group. Occasionally, we joined a few other ladies for a dramatic reading of a play. Although their husbands’ jobs brought them to Delhi and, unfortunately, took them away again last year, these women all left their marks on the community and on my heart. I have missed the camaraderie, reflective conversations and laughter.

In fact, I don’t think I realized how much I missed them until a plan was hatched to hold a summer reunion. Not everyone could make it, but a few of us did, and we had a wonderful time hanging out at Sue’s home in artsy-fartsy Door County, Wisconsin, June 25-28. Sue’s husband is presently working in Afghanistan with the U.S. Agency for International Development while she settles into their retirement home (which they bought sight unseen while living in India). The house sits high on a hill overlooking Lake Michigan with a steep staircase leading down to the wooded waterfront. It was idyllic.

Each morning, we lounged poolside with coffee and breakfast treats, re-connecting and catching up. Over the four days, we also walked to the Edgewood Orchard Galleries, where I bought a sculpture for my own lake house; took a bumpy ride on Lake Michigan in a rented pontoon boat piloted by Sue’s son, Brent; participated in a dramatic reading of “Fences” by August Wilson; held an official book club meeting (see the book recommendations at the end of this post); and visited a food fair and an art show. Cocktails in hand, we returned to the backyard in the evenings to watch the sun set.

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Adrienne, Catherine, Henrietta and I clambered down to the lakefront.
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Brent deftly handled the pontoon boat on choppy water, steering us to glassy Horseshoe Bay, where we lingered for a picnic lunch.
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Monique and Henri take the dogs out for a walk to the art gallery.
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The gallery featured an art-lined path through the woods.
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I bought this sculpture of an ibis, which the gallery shipped to our Michigan house. Here she is at Lake Orion.
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We bought this fish for Sue as a thank-you gift.
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Afternoon cocktails prepared by Adrienne!
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Back to front, left to right: Monique, Adrienne, Sue, Henri, me, Catherine.
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Catherine’s party pants.
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Henri and me at Gills Rock, the tip of Wisconsin’s mitten thumb peninsula.
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My motto.
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Brent took a summer job at Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant, where he herds the goats off the sod roof at night.
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Reading “Fences,” August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about black Americans in the 1950s.
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Sunset.
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Here’s the list of books we discussed. Fiction and non-fiction, old and new … in no order.
Beautiful Ruins – Jess Walter
The Saffron Kitchen – Yasmin Crowther
Don’t Let Him Know– Sandip Roy
A Dog’s Gift – Bob Drury
The Martian – Andy Weir
The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life– Bettany Hughes
The Children Act – Ian McEwan
Squatting with Dignity – Kumar Alok
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt – David McCullough
The Expats – Chris Pavone
Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave – Jennifer Fleischner
A House Divided – Pearl S. Buck
Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China – Pearl S. Buck
The Child Who Never Grew – Pearl S. Buck
Various books by Leon Uris
Clara and Mr. Tiffany – Susan Vreeland
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge – David McCullough
The Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy – Douglas Smith
The Lunar Chronicles – Marisa Meyer
The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
In the Garden of the Beasts -Erik Larson
Thunderstruck – Erik Larson
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry – Gabrielle Zevin
I’ll Give you the Sun – Jandy Nelson
All the Light We Cannot See– Anthony Doerr
Catering to Nobody – Diane Mott Davidson
The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins
To be Sung Underwater – Tom McNeal
Wild – Cheryl Strayed
The Orphan Train – Christina Baker Kline
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking – Susan Cain
The Cherry Harvest – Lucy Sanna
The Passion of Artemesia – Susan Vreeland
FDR – Jean Edward Smith
We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped on Bataan – Elizabeth Norman
I Served on Bataan – Juanita Redmond
Wild Swans – Jung Chang
Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett

Until we meet again, happy reading!

Birthday Girl Book Club

“You’re only as old as you feel.”

Well, to be honest, I’ve been feeling pretty stinkin’ old lately. Consumed by work, I feel too tired to kick back and have some fun. You know what they say about all work and no play. It makes Sharon feel like an old lady.

When my friend Mary Catherine suggested taking our book club out to a restaurant to celebrate my birthday, I retorted that it would have to be close to my house. However, she already had a place in mind. She knew a chef with a pasta restaurant in Gurgaon. If you don’t live in Delhi, then you won’t appreciate the impact of hearing that you have to leave work on a Friday afternoon and drive to Gurgaon, technically a Delhi suburb but far enough out that it considers itself a separate city. I had only been there once before and my strongest memory was of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours. I swore I would never again go to Gurgaon. And yet, that’s where I found myself on my birthday eve.

Mary Catherine had booked a van for most of the group, but some of them were delayed at school by parent-teacher conferences, so my friend Nancy and I headed out a bit early in my car. Despite the gloomy prognostications, my driver Gilbert found the restaurant in about 45 minutes. It was a BYOB joint, so Nancy and I popped across the street to the pompously named Galleria outdoor market to buy some wine. We asked the shopkeeper to chill a few bottles while we killed time poking around the shops.

When we spotted the Disney princess party hats, we knew we had stumbled upon Birthday Mecca. Inside, we found everything a birthday girl could ever want: tiaras, boas, sashes, chunky plastic jewelry, you name it. We settled on sparkly hats with marabou feathers. Mine featured a big taffeta rose and a ruffled button proclaiming “Birthday Girl.” The man, who was much too serious to work in this kind of store, pulled out a selection of white, pale pink and magenta hats, telling us, “Also have red for boys,” which made Nancy and me collapse in giggles because what boy wouldn’t feel much more masculine if his bedazzled party hat were RED instead of PINK? After buying hats for all the book club ladies, we were about to leave when Nancy spotted a fart machine. “Batteries not included,” said the deadpan shopkeeper, inducing another round of hysterics.

Strolling through the Galleria, we decided to spread some birthday joy.

First, we convinced the momowallahs to don party hats for a photo.

Then I wedged in between these two guys for another shot.

We picked up our chilled wine (and posed for a few more photos), and then walked back to the Pasta Bowl Company to meet up with the rest of our gang.

The Birthday Book Club

Mary Catherine with Chef Om and his lovely wife, Aditiy.

Chef Om and Aditiy treated us like royalty, even though we were quite loud and silly. From the various bruschetta appetizers to the perfectly tossed salads to the beautiful main courses, everything was deliciously fresh. While many Italian restaurants feature the same boring fare with the same gluey sauces, Chef Om’s creations clearly reflected his creativity and commitment to quality. Mary Catherine had ordered a chocolate cake with the inscription, “Happy birthday to our beautiful Sharon!” (awwwwww…), which we followed with mouth-watering tiramisu and a little banafee pie.

The evening was filled with so much laughter. We talked about our book for about five minutes (The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner … snore) and then moved on to more interesting topics.

Mary Catherine brought wine and paper cups from school in case the restaurant didn’t have wine glasses (which they did).

Chef Om mixed up some scrumptious salads.

Of course I had to help … and ended up spilling olive oil all over the place.

Cheese and wine – my two favorite food groups.

This was my dinner. A pumpkin-y ravioli with chorizo on top. I nearly licked my plate.

I blew out the candles AND blew cocoa powder all over myself and the surrounding area.

Swag! (Olive oil and a bag of pasta – so nice!)

One of the bench dwellers from our earlier market photo shoot had said good-bye with that classic line: “You’re only as old as you feel!” and his words stuck with me all night. It’s such a cliché and yet so true! A few hours of hilarity snapped me out of my funk and made me feel years younger than this newly acquired and meaningless 47. Happy birthday to me!

Postscript: Guess who loved my party hat even more than I did?

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