“A bright red boat
Yellow capsicums
Blue fishing nets
Ochre fort walls
My lost memory
white and frozen
now melts colour
ready to refract”
To my surprise, the voting had a photo finish. With literally zero seconds to spare at 10:59:59 PM, a final vote was submitted breaking the tie between the top two books which is good because Mia & I would have had a hard time choosing the winner. However, the book which won is not only a new genre for the book club, but one which will provide us with a very unique perspective echoing through the ages.
On a final note about the vote: My favorite comment indicated that "[it was] very hard to decide. I'd read them all." And I agree as I added practically all of them to my tbr list!
So Which Book Will We Read in December?
"Named one of the best books of 2015 by NPR, Amazon, Seattle Times, and Shelf Awareness.
A few bloody months in South Asia during the summer of 1947 explain the world that troubles us today.
Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody — it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s protégé and the political leader of India, believed Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand. But in August 1946, exactly a year before Independence, Calcutta erupted in street-gang fighting. A cycle of riots — targeting Hindus, then Muslims, then Sikhs — spiraled out of control. As the summer of 1947 approached, all three groups were heavily armed and on edge, and the British rushed to leave. Hell let loose. Trains carried Muslims west and Hindus east to their slaughter. Some of the most brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing in modern history erupted on both sides of the new border, searing a divide between India and Pakistan that remains a root cause of many evils. From jihadi terrorism to nuclear proliferation, the searing tale told in Midnight’s Furies explains all too many of the headlines we read today."