finished 04.16.10

Jess first invited me to join her book club years ago and a few times since then, but I didn’t think I was interested. I didn’t want to be told what to read and I didn’t want to sit around and be forced to talk about it. Within the past 6 months I have met a few of her friends that I never met before and each time I was like “they’re awesome, how do you know them?” and she’d say “oh, they’re in my book club.” A few weeks ago Jess invited me to a barbecue and it was at the home of some book club members and everyone convinced me, so I joined. Finally.

The book for this month was by comedian Chelsea Handler and was called My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands. This is a memoir that chronicles her pursuit of one night stands in short chapters that are easy to read on the train, so I whipped through the book in a couple days. If you really think a lot about this book, some of her behavior is pretty despicable, but if you just go with it and realize a lot of it is probably exaggerated, her profession is a performer and comedian after all, then it’s an amusing read.

Our book club meeting for the book was held on Sunday out in Bolingbrook at Gina and Jimmy (and Quentin’s) house. They chose a theme for the party based on the book – aphrodisiacs. So everyone brought food and drinks that were supposed to be aphrodisiacs. There were wieners, buns, dark chocolate, wine, sex on the beach drinks, buttery nipple drinks, figs, a pasta salad with pine nuts, asparagus and garlic and a large pot of steaming (meat)balls. I brought a few bottles of Rogue Chocolate Stout, because I’d read online that stout beer is considered and aphrodisiac in some countries and so is chocolate. The party’s most blatant “aphrodisiac” by far was this cake:

So basically we had a barbecue and then after eating we discussed the book. The person who picked the book had conversation starters and questions for the group to discuss. If you didn’t want to talk much, you didn’t have to. Due to the nature of this book, the conversation got pretty crazy at times! It was fun, though.

We left shortly after the book discussion so we could get back to the city. Bonus: Jess and I live close by each other so we can carpool to the meetings that aren’t in the city. Our next book is Switching Time, which was written by a doctor about a patient of his who has 17 personalties.

I think I’ll be sticking with the book club. I think it’s fun that every month it’s at someone else’s house and every month a different person picks the book. And that the picks can be anything. Fiction, nonfiction, new, old. It will be fun to be introduced to all different books, that I maybe wouldn’t normally read. And it’s not bad to talk about books. I realized I read a ton of books and never say a word to anyone about them. I have several hobbies that I participate in alone, when I should share them with people. Book reading is one of those hobbies that will be fun to add a social element to.

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