Dispatches from Champaca | June 22

Hello fellow book lover,

Have you been reading a lot this month? Our team began this month by sitting down to reflect on some of our favourite opening lines in books, our love-at-first-sentence! We ended up with a diverse and interesting assortment of books, you can have a look at the listicle here.

Do you have favourite first lines from a book that instantly transported you into a fictional world? Or lines that you can just never forget? Click the link to tell us about them.

At the store, we spent much of our time this month putting together and launching the third edition of the Champaca Book Subscription and Book Club. We also put in a lot of labour into reviving our Children's library! It is now alive and brimming with new titles, and open to new patrons. After two-years of screen fatigue, we're hoping you will be eager to bring your children to our library, browse our shelves, curl up with a book, and discover new stories with us.

We also had two book signings with authors in our bookstore. The first was one with Heta Pandit, author of Grinding Stories Retold, a beautiful collection of songs originally sung in Marathi and Konkani by women while they worked at the grinding stone as part of their household chores. The second signing we hosted was with the creators of Hope On: An Anthology of Comics, which is a collection of graphic narratives chronicling real-life snippets from the lives of women who found kindness, compassion, and love during uncertain times.   

And finally, here's what we've loved reading lately. One of our team members read A Book of Light by Jerry Pinto, a collection of harrowing yet moving stories about the fragility and strength of the human mind. It is a book that reminds us of our immense resilience, hope, and makes us feel less alone. Another team member read Everybody in This Room Will Someday be Dead by Emily Austin. The book tells the story of Gilda, a young atheist lesbian, who spends a lot of time musing about death, and accidentally ends up workiing at a Catholic Church. With a blend of wry humour and warmth, the book explores what it means to live and love with the knowledge of our mortality. 

You can always find our recommendations, our new arrivals, and all updates from the store on our social media!