My Blog, Your Life: Happy Birthday Read Between the Wines!

Alpfa Girl

My dear friend Ami is a girl of many talents, she’s super smart (a derivatives trader no less!) extremely social and loves to read! They don’t make them like that anymore now do they? Her Book Club, Read Between the Wines is now a year old and continues to bring together those of us who love to read, happy anniversary Alpfa Girl! xoxo
Psst! If you’d like to share Your Life on My Blog please write to info@missmalini.com.

Ami

“Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” – validated by Mark Twain

Once upon a time, well more like this time last year, I woke up with an idea of a Book Club, hoping to find like-minded people who not only wanted to get back into the habit of reading, but also loved discussing and talking about books. And of course, with the added vino effect we’re talking a highly animated social experience! Thus was born this baby Read Between the Wines - what started off with a few friends (and friends of friends) is now an active group of lit-lovers.

Cheers

The act of reading may be best enjoyed as a solitary experience, however through our discussions we have shared insights, histories, experiences and wonders about the world, and made some lovely new friends. In the first year itself we have devoured novels like Kafka on the Shore, Forty Rules of Love, Cloud Atlas, Shiva Trilogy, Chanakya’s Chant, Steve Jobs bio, Hunger Games, The Great Gatsby& many others.

Bookmarks

We celebrated our first anniversary with great fanfare at The Tasting Room, in presence of a remarkably funny yet humble writer Parul Sharma – author of Bringing up Vasu – That First Year and By the Water Cooler.

Parul Sharma

The evening began with some cupcakes, which the bookworms were eying from the start…

cupcake heaven

After having taken care of that, we moved onto “some” Sangria, ok lots of it!

Sangria

This was all part of a strategic move to have Parul answer some tricky questions on competition, the good, bad and ugly of the publishing business. Kindle v/s Hardcopy, pet peeves, hidden talents, favorite authors & inspirations (PG Wodehouse). Superstitions, the last book that kept her up all night (our next read), best fan mail, celebrity crush (George Clooney) …and a lot more that really can’t go on a public forum!

Questions for Parul

A very candid chat with Parul on balancing a full-time career along-with honing your writing skills, on blogging tips, discussing her journey from a corporate executive to mommy to blogger and now an accomplished writer, talking of inputs, inspiration and research on both her published books. Both the books are incredibly funny especially By the Water Cooler which will surely remind you of some colleagues – I just hope you don’t laugh out loud the next time you see them in their cubicle!

Thank you Parul for an insightful & wonderful evening.

Ami and Parul

We also discussed Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, set in gothic Barcelona. The book starts with a cemetery of forgotten books (need I say more). “Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows & strengthens” said Zafon, leaving us mesmerized. Our next pick is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

Read Between the Wines

Book lovers never go to bed alone… come and read with us @ RBTW2011@gmail.com, 2012 is gonna be incredible!

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Love this! And now dying to read Shadow of the Wind myself! Here’s a list of my Top 5 Books for your reading pleasure :)