Clubbin'

I've always wanted to be a member of a bookclub -- not a cheesy Oprah kind of bookclub that takes itself all seriously, but a fun bookclub where you read stuff you might not read otherwise and drink a bunch and talk about it and have fun. At a Labor Day party a few weeks ago, me and two other friends revealed in a fit of drunkenness that we all had the same bookclub dream. Thus our nascent bookclub came into being.

The first book we're reading is Prague : a novel by Arthur Phillips (2002). I didn't like everything about this book, but I did like a lot of things about it. It concerns a group of young Americans (and one Canadian) living in Budapest in the early 1990s, just after the fall of Communism. None of it actually takes place in Prague (which, tangentially, I always want to pronounce as Pray-guh instead of Prah-guh because that is how they pronounce the name of the tiny Czech town in eastern Nebraska that my grandma is from). And one of the characters is actually from Nebraska. Overall, the book gets a thumbs up, and there are scenes and characters that I am still thinking about. I don't want to say too much about it, though, because then I would totally blow my bookclub wad and then what kind of a bookclub member would I be? Not a very good one, my friends.

I even found a webpage for the book that includes a "reading group guide," but I think the questions are kind of lame. Plus, who wants to sit around and read a bunch of questions?

I'm excited to see how our bookclub goes, and if any of ya'll in Austin feel like joining us, let me know and I bet I can let you know about the next selection. Our drunken plan was to read one modern book and then one classic, which seems like a good way to shake things up.