To all Asia Book Club of NYC members:

My sincere apologies for having canceling our meetings scheduled for June and July. Basically there were two reasons: Me and the book. My issues were the usual stuff: moving to a new apartment took more time than I thought it would plus the demands of work (extreme has become normal). Perhaps more importantly though was the book we chose (by vote):

India: The Definitive History by D. R. Sardesai

Of the four hardy souls who RSVP'd for the July meeting (where we were to discuss the ENTIRE book), three thought it was bad but they'd seen worse. For myself, I thought it was really bad and not sure I've ever read worse. In short, I think it was just a terrible choice. To me, the book read like one long meandering randomly organized paragraph - describing a time period and place of immense complexity. I was literally getting nothing out of it but a headache.

A bit of context for new and old Asia Book Club members
Prior to this year, our book club had been a general history club. We read history on any topic, time period, or place. In April we changed the name/focus of the club to Asia with the intention of reading, as our home page says, "...fiction by Asian authors (with Asian settings), as well as non-fiction books about Asian history and current events. My thought is that in order to begin to know and understand a country or a region, to get a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the people, their culture, their country - it makes sense to read both the “hard stuff” (history, etc.), and “soft stuff” (novels, etc.)."

Our first two selections were, in April, Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang and in May, The White Tiger: A Novel by Aravind Adiga. After our discussion of the White Tiger a view was expressed that instead of jumping from country to country, we ought to stay with one country for a period of time and read history and fiction and develop a deeper understanding than we might have otherwise. Furthermore, it was thought that at the beginning of the "reading period" for each country, we ought to begin with a comprehensive 'history of country X'. This lead us to chose (among three "Joe-approved" options) the dreaded Sardesai book.

Where do we stand now?
I completely agree with the idea of 'staying in one place' for a time (how long is TBD) but I am now, not surprisingly not wholly comfortable with the idea of reading a comprehensive 'textbook' on the history of our chosen country. We can discuss more at the next meeting (yes there will be one!) but in short, I think the idea of getting the big picture/historical context via a full length 'survey text' is probably not the right way to go. Even the US, with its relatively very short history short history, would be a tough read in one volume - and not very enjoyable at that. But for Asian countries with typically centuries of ground to cover, it seems a fools game to me to even attempt to read the entire history of a place in a single book.

Executive Decision
As longer term members know, when we reach a point of decision, I'm not shy about exercising my right as the 'head book club dude' (ah the tyranny of reading!), to point us in a particular direction and say, 'we're going THERE now'. And I'm doing that now. For our next meeting, the book selection is:

A Concise History of Modern India, by Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, 2nd edition, Oct. 1996, 372 pages

I came across this little volume while wandering Barnes & Noble. The first thing to note about this book is that it is NOT a complete history of India. It begins AFTER the Vedic period with the Sultanate/Mughal period (~1200) and continues to the present time. Very briefly the reasons I chose this book are

1. Leaving the Vedic period for another time is a good idea. I read a lot about this period in Sardesai and learned close to nothing. Seemed to be lots going on, none of it very clear or obvious. The period is worth a book on its own, should we choose to complete our historic context-building.

2. The Sultanate/Mughal period would seem to rival the Vedic in terms of its complexity when one considers social, political, economic trends/issues - in addition to religion (which seems to have been the typical focus of many historians in the past). Having read this (first) chapter, my comment is that the authors cover this period (in not very many pages) in clear, lucid, well organized, with enough context so that the reader is able grasp and retain the major events and themes.

3. It's short. 372 pages but much of that is made up of a glossary and chronology (also very helpful for the reader to avoid getting lost).

So in conclusion
Thanks for bearing with me during a challenging period personally, two book club meeting cancellations, and a truly massive yet authentic (Indian author after all) but ultimately complete crap book. I'm committed to getting this show back on the road and look forward to reading lots of interesting Indian fiction (we MUST read something by Mistry) and history (White Mughals anyone?). THEN, pretty quickly, traveling to either Indonesia, Japan, Korea, or, what's that other big one? Oh right, China.

Hope to see you in September.

Best regards,
Joe

PS: I'll send around another note with details for the next meeting.

Asia Book Club of NYC