Spotlight: SOAS Book Club

Mohsin Haider, BA Economics

Attention all bookworms!

Words don’t just paint a thousand pictures, they paint a whole new world as well.

We here at SOAS Book Club are dedicated to creating a community for like-minded individuals to come together and share their love of all things bookish. Whether you read ction or non ction, we welcome you all. SOAS Book Club is a new society established at the beginning of this academic year, but we have already successfully hosted a variety of events—with more to come!

We have monthly book meetings where we discuss the chosen book(s) of the month; we discussed Murder on the Orient Express in December, e Wrath and the Dawn in January, and most recently, romance books in February. Alongside this, we have also held a games night. e games night was a huge hit and many of our members had an enjoyable time, especially those who managed to win the prizes. Furthermore, we held a book swap event where our members came along with old books they no longer wanted and le with brand-new books to read. One of our most popular events, which we collaborated with the Writers Society for, was our Poetry Slam Night. We had numerous people come up to the stage and share lovely written poetry and compelling short stories, including our very own Co-President, Anika Wadood, who wrote a beautiful piece of poetry.

SOAS Book Club aims to create a space for all book lovers, as well as those who are interested in becoming a bookworm. Books may sometimes hurt the bank account, but it is worth the magic. Books are a powerful form of escapism; nothing compares to that special feeling of being swept away in a book and forgetting about reality for a while.

We have many more exciting events on the way including bookstore visits and collaborations with other societies—maybe even other universities! If you want to be a part of the committee, we are going to be hiring for some exciting new roles soon. Of course, if you just want to be a member as well, that is perfectly ne too. We hope to continue growing as a society and reach out to as fans kidnapping her mid-night and dancing away with her. e whole tournament led up to this day. Sunday, the tournament nal. e nal was against Edinburgh University, who, like us, were tired and exhausted from the past matches yet gave us a good battle. e game was tight; however, Omala Abrol got confused between football and handball, giving the opposition a free kick. Mimi Longchamp was challenged ( nally…) as goalkeeper, and despite all her e orts, Edinburgh netted the ball. is was nerve-wracking and had us all on edge, with Diana Son making sure the referee knew what she was thinking. e second half was lled with beautiful attempts from both sides however, we, unfortunately, conceded another goal sealing the 2-0 loss. At the nal blow of the whistle, Currimjee’s revenge plans included spraying both teams with fake ‘champagne’ leaving us all sticky and ending the tournament on a somewhat sweet and bubbly note. many SOAS students as we can. To join our club, follow us on Instagram (@soasbookclub) or send us an email at soasbookclub@gmail.com and we can add you to our WhatsApp group and mailing list. We look forward to recruiting new members and hosting plenty of exciting events. See you all soon - over and out.

Monday arrived, and it was time to go home. As we zoomed past the French ‘paysage’ in the Eurostar, we re ected on this wonderful experience. Even though we were second best, we were content with the outcome of the tournament, and it taught us that we can’t always win.

Oh well, c’est la vie!