The Readers’ Club of the Department of English organized Pitch a Book, an event that invited participants to recommend their favourite book(s), on 16 April 2022.
The event called for recommendations of books/ poets/ authors, from any language, presented in any form of speech, under five minutes.
It was initiated with a brief by the student organizers, followed by a spelling out of the rules for the presentation. The first recommendation was Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones from the series “Mortal Instruments” (Young Adult Fiction or YAF), by Muskan Saxena. She elaborated on how Clare’s compelling writing perpetuates true representation of life and its lived experience.
Next in the line was a presentation by Ishita Jacob on Agatha Christie’s A Crooked House (Murder-mystery/ Whodunnit) which led to a discussion on nitty-gritty of the mystery genre and how Christie has created a niche in that sphere.
After this, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Historical Fiction) was recommended and the audience were encouraged to appreciate Zusak’s craft by exploring how he has personified death to narrate a story in a war-stricken time.
Following this came an interesting recommendation of The Rabbit and the Squirrel: A Love Story about Friendship by Siddharth Dhanwant Shanghvi (Illustrated Fiction). The book tells the story of two anthropomorphized characters who exchange societal constraints.
Vendetta by Catherine Doya (YAF) was recommended by Vanika Chowdhary who rooted for it as being an intensely dramatic and extremely human story of I’ll-famed mafia families.
Thereafter, Heena Kishnani enthralled the audience with her pitch for Maulana Rumi’s soulful poetry. She presented a melodious ode that narrated her mystifying experience of exploring the Sufi poet.
Chemical Hearts (YAF) by Krystal Sutherland was next in line and was Nandani Sharma’s pitch who shared how she found the book to be an apt description of a young adult’s tryst with emotions.
After this, Agyeya’s Prison Poems and another entitled Timeless Tales of Marwar added the genres of Prison and Folk literature to the list of recommendations by Aditi Mantri, one of the two organisers.
The session was rounded off with a Psychological thriller-recommendation of
