The Reading List

Widower Mukesh lives quietly on the outskirts of London, having recently lost the beloved wife with whom he shared fifty happy years. Now his life has been reduced to a mechanical routine — shopping every Wednesday, the occasional visit to the temple, and nature documentaries — yet none of it brings him any real joy.
What troubles Mukesh most is that he cannot seem to connect with his granddaughter Priya, a shy girl who lives through books, just as her grandmother once did. Hoping to find common ground with her through literature, Mukesh goes to the local library, where he meets Aleisha — a sharp-witted seventeen-year-old who has taken a summer job there as a way to escape her own troubles at home. Aleisha, who is not much of a reader herself, accidentally discovers a worn scrap of paper tucked inside a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird — a list of books — and, despite her skepticism, decides to try reading them one by one. When Mukesh comes to the library, hoping that books might help him grow closer to his granddaughter, Aleisha quietly shares the same mysterious list with him, and he becomes her guide into the magical world of literature.