Book Club Biopsy

We had a our first book club meeting yesterday, to discuss Unwind by Neal Shusterman.  I really didn't know what to expect because I've never been to a book club before.  I've heard about them, have friends in them, saw a cartoon version of one, and even got thrown out of a house to make room for one.  But I had never actually seen a book club in action.

So, I did some homework before our first meeting.  I downloaded discussion questions from the author's website, icebreakers from Litlovers.com, and posted links to everything on our book blog.

We brought fixings for guacamole and taco toppings to Anne's house.  After about 15 minutes of prep, we went outside to her expansive backyard to eat tacos and discuss Unwind.

I won't go into the details of the discussion, but suffice it to say that we had no problem talking about the book.  I was so content out there on the patio, I didn't even bother to go inside to grab my discussion questions.  After stuffing ourselves with tacos and chatting about books, we picked a date for our next meeting.  It was Anne's pick:  Ender's Game.

Now that it's the day after, I've had time to ruminate over what book clubs do.  Did we do a good job?  Was our book club like everyone else's book club?  I put the question to a Google search:  "What happens at book clubs."  Without fail, each webpage that popped up had oodles of photos--photos of food and half-empty glasses of wine.  And when I say half-empty, I mean that in the optimist's way-- that is, if you've emptied half of it, you're feeling fairly optimistic.  Strangely enough, though, there was nary a book in sight.  Apparently, the purpose of a book club is social drinking.  Did we do something wrong?

Now let me set the record straight--Anne did offer us wine and beer.  Nobody took her up on the offer, and at the time I didn't think it was a big deal.  In retrospect, did we miss our chance to be a "normal" book club?

It reminded me of an episode of the animated show (that means cartoon) "King of the Hill" where Peggy Hill, a bonafide middle-aged nerd, goes to her first book club meeting.  She's done her homework, ready for probing questions, and voila--out come the wine glasses.  Peggy is shocked and disappointed.  Apparently this is the 21st century version of the Feminine Mystique.

I suppose since one of the functions of book club is drinking, we should at least attempt to create drinks that are consistent with the book we're discussing. If the book was Harry Potter, it would be pumpkin juice and butter beer.  I don't know what to expect from Ender's Game, a sci-fi classic, but when I googled "ender's game drink,"  I found "Giant's drink."  We could have some fun with that.  At the very least, figuring out the appropriate drink could be a great topic of discussion.

Our reading group is great--there really is nothing to fix with us.  But certainly, a little Giant's drink may liven the party.   Unlike Peggy Hill, we can have our book club and drink it too.