The Hungry Hundred Book Club

A summary from Wikipedia :
I Am a Cat (Japanese: 吾輩は猫である, Hepburn: Wagahai wa Neko de Aru) is a satirical novel written in 1905–1906 by Natsume Sōseki about Japanese society during the Meiji period (1868–1912), particularly the uneasy mix of Western culture and Japanese traditions.
Sōseki's title, Wagahai wa Neko de Aru, uses a very high-register phrasing more appropriate to a nobleman, conveying grandiloquence and self-importance. This is somewhat ironic, since the speaker, an anthropomorphized domestic cat, is a regular house cat of a teacher, and not of a high-ranking noble as the manner of speech suggests, an example of Sōseki's love for droll writing.
The book was first published in ten installments in the literary journal Hototogisu. At first, Sōseki intended only to write the short story that constitutes the first chapter of I Am a Cat. However, Takahama Kyoshi, one of the editors of Hototogisu, persuaded Sōseki to serialize the work, which evolved stylistically as the installments progressed. Nearly all the chapters can stand alone as discrete works.[1]

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New to the Hungry Hundred Book Club? Here's what you need to know:

1. Read the book (If you don't manage to finish it by the meetup date, don't worry. As long as you're not going to be too disappointed by spoilers, you're still welcome to join.)
2. Come to the meeting, usually (but not always!) on the last Sunday of every month.
3. Be prepared to order food/drink at the venue to show our appreciation for letting us use their space. This is a requirement. A lot of time and effort has been put into finding a place that will accommodate our group without an outrageous minimum charge or rental fee, and you'll never be asked to contribute to organiser fees, so please show your respect and support for the restaurant that's letting us use their space.
4. Discuss! It's a casual conversation, so don't be afraid to ask questions and let us know what you think.

An introduction on Amazon:
" A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys."--Edith Wharton

Lily Bart knows that she must marry--her expensive tastes and mounting debts demand it--and, at twenty-nine, she has every artful wile at her disposal to secure that end. But attached as she is to the social world of her wealthy suitors, something in her rebels against the insipid men whom circumstances compel her to charm.
"Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape," Lily muses as she contemplates the prospect of being bored all afternoon by Percy Grice, dull but undeniably rich, "on the bare chance that he might ulti-
mately do her the honor of boring her for life?" Lily is distracted from her prey by the arrival of Lawrence Selden, handsome, quick-witted, and penniless. A runaway bestseller on publication in 1905, The House of Mirth is a brilliant romantic novel of manners, the book that established Edith Wharton as one of America's greatest novelists.

" A tragedy of our modern life, in which the relentlessness of what men used to call Fate and esteem, in their ignorance, a power beyond their control, is as vividly set forth as ever it was by Aeschylus or Shakespeare." --The New York Times

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
1920 for The Age of Innocence. But it was the publication of The House of Mirth in 1905 that marked Wharton's coming-of-age as a writer.

*****
New to the Hungry Hundred Book Club? Here's what you need to know:

1. Read the book (If you don't manage to finish it by the meetup date, don't worry. As long as you're not going to be too disappointed by spoilers, you're still welcome to join.)
2. Come to the meeting, usually (but not always!) on the last Sunday of every month.
3. Be prepared to order food/drink at the venue to show our appreciation for letting us use their space. This is a requirement. A lot of time and effort has been put into finding a place that will accommodate our group without an outrageous minimum charge or rental fee, and you'll never be asked to contribute to organiser fees, so please show your respect and support for the restaurant that's letting us use their space.
4. Discuss! It's a casual conversation, so don't be afraid to ask questions and let us know what you think.

A snippet of the summary from Britannica:
The epic scale of the novel confronts the ruthless brutality of class and caste as the protagonists are left vulnerable to the vagaries of poverty and discrimination. The novel meticulously recreates Indira Gandhi’s India, and the author uses this context to present a paradoxically humane vision of inhumanity.
Rigorously unsentimental and full of black humor, A Fine Balance takes the reader through a vicious and sometimes carnivalesque world of poverty and utter powerlessness. The novel’s harrowing denouement is as shocking and as distressing as anything in 20th-century literature. Perhaps Mistry’s greatest achievement is his clear-sighted depiction of relentless, impersonal brutality in a story of lives torn apart not by individual weakness but by institutional inequity and the horrors of corrupt power. The genius of the novel lies in its refusal to allow the reader to escape to either pathos or cynicism.

*****
New to the Hungry Hundred Book Club? Here's what you need to know:

1. Read the book (If you don't manage to finish it by the meetup date, don't worry. As long as you're not going to be too disappointed by spoilers, you're still welcome to join.)
2. Come to the meeting, usually (but not always!) on the last Sunday of every month.
3. Be prepared to order food/drink at the venue to show our appreciation for letting us use their space. This is a requirement. A lot of time and effort has been put into finding a place that will accommodate our group without an outrageous minimum charge or rental fee, and you'll never be asked to contribute to organiser fees, so please show your respect and support for the restaurant that's letting us use their space.
4. Discuss! It's a casual conversation, so don't be afraid to ask questions and let us know what you think.

A summary on Amazon:
Burmese Days focuses on a handful of Englishmen who meet at the European Club to drink whisky and to alleviate the acute and unspoken loneliness of life in 1920s Burma—where Orwell himself served as an imperial policeman—during the waning days of British imperialism.

One of the men, James Flory, a timber merchant, has grown soft, clearly comprehending the futility of England’s rule. However, he lacks the fortitude to stand up for his Indian friend, Dr. Veraswami, for admittance into the whites-only club. Without membership and the accompanying prestige that would protect the doctor, the condemning and ill-founded attack by a bitter magistrate might bring an end to everything he has accomplished. Complicating matters, Flory falls unexpectedly in love with a newly arrived English girl, Elizabeth Lackersteen. Can he find the strength to do right not only by his friend, but also by his conscience?

*****
New to the Hungry Hundred Book Club? Here's what you need to know:

1. Read the book (If you don't manage to finish it by the meetup date, don't worry. As long as you're not going to be too disappointed by spoilers, you're still welcome to join.)
2. Come to the meeting, usually (but not always!) on the last Sunday of every month.
3. Be prepared to order food/drink at the venue to show our appreciation for letting us use their space. This is a requirement. A lot of time and effort has been put into finding a place that will accommodate our group without an outrageous minimum charge or rental fee, and you'll never be asked to contribute to organiser fees, so please show your respect and support for the restaurant that's letting us use their space.
4. Discuss! It's a casual conversation, so don't be afraid to ask questions and let us know what you think.