October Meeting Recap

Dear Book Clubbers,

Last week’s meeting to discuss Three Cups of Tea at Jackie’s house was…SCARY!  Just kidding.  We had a great discussion about the book and the Halloween decorations were a real treat.  The consensus was that although the story of Greg Mortenson and all he has accomplished is very inspiring, the actual writing absolutely stunk.  The overall rating ended up being a 2.7.  Those of us who are attending the lecture at UB on November 10th are anxious to see if he is as good as we have heard in person.  Anyone who gets tickets is welcome to contact Jackie regarding car-pooling.

The next meeting is on Wednesday, December 1st at my house.  We will gather at 6:30 PM for substantial appetizers (you should be able to have it be dinner).  The book is River Horse by William Least Heat-Moon.  Please show your guys the list of possible choices for next year’s co-ed meeting that we came up with at the selection night.  I feel that we could use some more prospects to vote on and hope that some suggestions will materialize by 12/1.  If you didn’t sign up to bring something at the last meeting, please contact me to find out what we could still use. 

We decided to have a purely social meeting after the holidays on Thursday, January 6th at Polly’s house.  Well OK, we are not totally serious about the “purely social” part.  We definitely need some more book ideas for the coming year.  Of the ones that made the top 3 or 4 in the selection process, there is a lot of non-fiction and not any books that make sense for a lighter summer read.  Remember, our choices are only as good as your input.  We will briefly discuss what people can bring at the co-ed night, but more book ideas are much needed.  Incidentally, we thought we’d make this a Thursday meeting just to mix things up. 

On Wednesday, January 19th, we will meet at Joan’s to discuss The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  Since we expect that to be a popular read and since Joan’s house has two levels, we thought we’d try our experiment of splitting the discussion into two smaller groups for this meeting.  Of course we will be all together for the social and business portions of the night.

In other news, Ina asked about interest in a cookie exchange this year.  Since people seemed up for it, I am assuming she will let us know when it will be.  Also stay tuned as Terry may organize some sort of wine tasting event in the future.

In a separate e-mail, you will get a list of addresses and phone numbers of the members who are reasonably active in book club.  I apologize in advance for any mistakes or omissions.  It is a very hard list to maintain since people attend sporadically and are not present to correct any misinformation I have.  If something is wrong with your listing in this document, let me know and I will correct it in the next version.

That’s all for now.  Thanks again to Jackie for opening her wonderfully decorated home to us and for doing such a great job leading our discussion.

Jan