For this month's selection, I turned to our newest book club member, Susan.  It was perfect timing, really.  I mean, she'd been a member of our club for a few whole weeks before I put the heat on her.  There's no better way to welcome someone than to make them feel immediate pressure.  Please join Susan and me in reading Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry.  I sure hope we like it.  KIDDING.  There's no real pressure here.  If we were ambitious enough to have a motto, it would be "Read it, you might like it.  If you feel like it.  No rush."


The book is described in this way:
"Firozsha Baag is an apartment building in Bombay. Its ceilings need plastering and some of the toilets leak appallingly, but its residents are far from desperate, though sometimes contentious and unforgiving. In these witty, poignant stories, Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new."

If we could have called last year The Year of Memoirs, this year would for me be called The Year of India.  I've read probably half a dozen books that take place in India or follow the lives of Indian families.  Having spent so much time in Bombay (in my imagination) this year, I am looking forward to meeting more characters in the same setting.

For this month's pairing, Susan has recommended a Gin and Tonic - Bombay Gin, of course.  And who can argue with that?  Except for my mother, who I know would argue that the only things that go with Bombay are ice and olives.  And if that's the worst argument we have, I think we're in pretty good shape.