Books 'n Booze

November Saloon!

On November 28th, we gathered to swap Thanksgiving stories, share good food, discuss a book, listen to great music, and debate current events. Another successful Saloon!

• Food:
  • Des brought an awesome veggie tray. She tried a Pinterest recipe but it was a Pin-trocity, so the tray was Plan B. It was a yummy Plan B, though, and we picked the tray clean while waiting for Matt to get home (soooomeone needs to be added to the Saloon calendar).
  • I served chicken stuffed with ham and mozzarella, and threw in some broccoli just in case anyone was feeling healthy.
  • Jen shared a WoooooOOOOOooonderful peanut butter pie, which sparked a conversation about secret Pinterest boards (she was trying to keep it a sur-PIEs! Get it? Like surprise? But with PIE.)
• Music: Apparently we all had some angst as teenagers, because we were able to come up with five songs for the Teenage Angst theme.
  • Jen kicked it old school, including bands like Aerosmith and Guns N’ Roses.
  • Des added some punky teen to the mix with artists like Avril Lavigne and Yellowcard.
  • I got us sampling some scream-o with The Used. And I forgot to burn everyone CDs, which I just realized typing this.

   

• Book: Des and I had read PoBaW before, but Jen had not. Overall, we felt that PoBaW is neat because it’s written as a series of letters, but weird because every other adult seems to turn out to be HORRIBLE. We wondered why the book had a 70s feel and agreed that many characters seemed out of place in the 90s. We wondered about the main character–a product of horrible events, or perhaps someone with a mental disability?–and discussed the mystery recipient of the book letters. We gushed over the teacher, which of course forced us to watch the trailer so that we could see Paul Rudd. Overall, the student characters were labeled as “endearing,” and the book called “worth reading.” And I am going to drag Jen and Des to see the movie with me eventually. (I mean, it’s got Hermionie in it! It’s gotta be awesome.)
• Current Events:
  • We shared lots of life hacks, which, thanks to Pinterest, are now shared in picture lists. The soda-cap double hanger is my favorite.
  • We talked about refurbished WalMarts (libraries!), and how awesome the biggest library would be to visit.
  • Marijuana on ballots in different states was a great, election-month topic, and we talked a bit about the election in general.
  • Our liveliest debate was about the problems surrounding teenage rape and the discussion of it in the news, sparking from a journalist’s blog post that announced his disagreement of his editor’s discussion of rape in his newspaper. We talked about rape and the way it’s discussed in America, in the news, and by bloggers.
  • We reviewed a list of the best books of 2012, which we pretty much didn’t read any of.
  • Finally, we spent about 20 minutes on the “People you won’t believe actually exist” list, first laughing at it ourselves and then making the boys endure it as well. (The leopard mom and son still freak me out the most.)

Overall, a great bookclub, some great discussion, and of course, some great Magic time for our quasi-members, Matt and Tim. (After re-reading that sentence, I think I should clarify that they were playing the card game Magic.)

Yay Saloon!