DECEMBER 13th MEETING NOTES

Wow!  That Book Discussion post by Baron is a hard act to follow.  Luckily,  the business portion of the meeting was pretty short.  Everyone paid their book club dues.  We are accumulating quite the fund!  At the next meeting perhaps we should discuss some potential uses for our fund.  Maybe a field trip to a winery?  Or a masseuse at one of our meetings?  Just throwing out ideas...

Baron presented the group with his new and improved book club drawing, which will, after much waiting and anticipation, hopefully soon adorn our book club T-shirts.  Deuce represented that she will color the drawing and the T-shirts will be made!  Yay!

I shared with the group an app I had heard about on the radio, called the NPR Book Concierge.  It has reviews of the best books of 2015.  Since all of us have been thinking about our selection for the next round of books, I thought this might help us identify some winners.  Although, as we all know too well, sometimes the reviews of books can be deceiving!

Mentioning NPR reminded Gilligan of an NPR podcast called Serial.  Gilligan told the group that Season 2 of this podcast is dynamite, and he highly recommended it to the Novel Spirits.  Gilligan also mentioned that he needs blog access, which Baron has since squared away.  Thanks Baron!

Drawing inspiration from Indy's Off the Grid segment from this meeting, Deuce had an idea for our next meeting - a game called "Whose Line...", in which we all bring a quote by an author of one of the books that we have read.  It doesn't necessarily have to be from the book that we have read, but it can be.  Sounds interesting!

We also had a brief discussion of some recent news items that were related to this month's selection, GRAY MOUNTAIN.  There has recently been legislation proposed to ban mountaintop removal mining in Cumberland, Tennessee.  Also, a mining executive was recently convicted of a misdemeanor related to the Upper Big Branch mine explosion, in which 29 miners were killed.

At the end of our meeting, we did our first Novel Spirits gift swap, which was a smashing success (I hope).  I have certainly been using my wine aerator!  Boss and Chief have been chomping at the bit to make a trip to Barnes and Noble to spend their gift cards from the Novel Spirits.

Our next book is BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey.  We only have three books after this one!!  Chief selected Guardians of Ga'hoole - The Capture by Kathryn Lasky as his next bonus book.  Our next meeting will be on January 24, 2016 at Baron's castle, where we can all break our New Years' resolutions to drink less and eat healthier.  Until then, Novel Spirits, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

GRAY MOUNTAIN BOOK DISCUSSION

Howdy Novel Spirits. Before I begin, let me give you a little primer on this post. First off, Archimedes and I decided to conduct role reversals this month: I'll do the book discussion post and she'll handle the business portion of the meeting post. This could mean trouble since she is a lot more analytical, creative, intelligent (and left or right brained, whichever is the artsy fartsy side). So I'm sure I won't meet the standard she has been creating for these posts. C'est la vie. More priming for you: Archimedes did a nice favor for me tonight by taking our demonic leeches (Chief and Boss) out to eat and shopping, thus giving me some time to myself to decompress and destress etc. So I've been doing a lot of reading (not yet BOSSY PANTS, sorry for the Spoiler btw, biiyeeeee) but some boring finance, math crap you don't care about. But also, I've been drinking several of my home made Winter Spice Ale beer. And please allow me this brief moment of conceit, but I'm quite proud of my creation, and its really cool that I have a buzz from my very own home made drug. Well done Baron.

Ok so now you have the current conditions. Here is the book discussion. But first, let me take this opportunity to say that I really enjoy our book club. It has been a very informative, educational and mind opening activity for me. There's no other way we would all read the same book and have the opportunity to get together and share our opinions on it. And its so interesting that we all have different opinions on them (with a few exceptions such as: HUCK FINN we all loved, THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE we all disliked etc). So thanks to you all and this club, I get out of my comfort zone. A normal thought process for me is this: "Good morning Baron, lets take a moment to acknowledge your generosity to all the people you are allowing to share your presence today. Oh, and book club is today, we can all discuss how we all agree with me how this book was (great/terrible/mediocre) and proceed to praise me and my superior intellect...." Well, obviously the real world isn't like that and it is so interesting to see that our small group can have completely different interpretations of the same book. And I always learn new angles and frameworks about the books from you all that I hadn't thought about on my own so I am very thankful, not to mention humbled quite frequently. ---Wait one, time for another delicious Winter Spice Ale, perhaps I'll name it the Baron!?  too much?? yeah you're right--- so anyway this long, stupid, off topic diatribe which thankfully is not posted on Facebook, is just to say that I've really enjoying book club and its helping me evolve my own beliefs and attitudes. About books of course, but also about other aspects of life like politics, religion, philosophy, breakfast cereal etc. Of course I have my own views on all that but I need to keep in mind that the "other side" can make good points too and I shouldn't just shut them out. If nothing else, listening to things I disagree with can be considered "competitive intelligence". Point is, I should at least listen to other viewpoints before I crush them under my baby seal skin leather boots of arrogance.

For example: I love beer. It is the nectar of the gods. How on Earth can anyone not love beer, I say?? Well, Indy and Deuce do not love beer. They say, "How on Earth can anyone tolerate beer?" Well we are pretty much polar opposites on our views of beer. I can't convice them to love it and vice versa. Yet somehow we find a way to coexist. I have to admit that there are people out there who don't love beer and they hopefully have to admit that there are people who do. We can tell each other why we do or don't and go about our business.

ANYWAY........... I feel I've gone on just a bit of a tangent there. I apologize. I almost deleted all this hot garbage/musty bus seats of a post but I'm too lazy. Let's get back on topic:

So this book discussion was interesting because it caused the largest variation in opinions. Our typical 1-5 Star ratings was entirely across the board from 1 to 5. I think that is fascinating. As Archimedes suggested earlier, we cast the book's characters with actors and acrtresses since several of John Grisham's books become movies. However, our secretary failed to document everyone's character list so I feel like its only fair to chastise her severely. GO

As mentioned previously, there was disagreement as to the level of character development and plot development. I won't elaborate other than to say that opinions on this were similar to opinions on the overall Star rating: from one extreme to the other.

So yeah, some really liked it, others really disliked it. But its cool. I evaluate books 1000% times more now that I've joined the Novel Spirits (yes it is possible to have a 1000% change, don't judge me). I'm glad. Now I try to analyze why I like a book or don't. What is it that made me mad or happy? Am I mad at a character because the author did a wonderful job making that character? Or am I mad at the author for making a bad characer? I never thought so much about a book before and I'm learning a ton. Plus I love eating all the food at our meetings. Probably won't be any of my Baron Beer left by the next meeting at the rate I'm going.

Anyway, you will likely regret reading this post and pray for this lost time back in your life. Sorry about that. To close, I just thought that I always try to slip in a movie or book quote into my posts and may not have done that yet for this one so here is one right off the top of my head from one of the best Christmas movies of all time (not debatable folks): National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation:

"Merry Christmas!! The shitter was full"

CASTING CALL

Taking inspiration from Baron's activities and questions for the last meeting, I thought of an idea for our next meeting.  Since the author of our current book, John Grisham, has had several of his books made into movies (i.e. The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Firm, A Time to Kill, etc.), I thought we could come up with a few ideas for who we would cast as the main characters in Gray Mountain.  I thought it would be interesting to see how everyone else pictured the characters.  As with all suggestions, the Novel Spirits can take it or leave it.  Either way, I look forward to seeing you guys next weekend!

VOGON POETRY - PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!

Zaphod vs. Arthur - by Baron

Who is better? Which traits are we?
Seat of your pants or exciting as tea?

One steal ships, another takes sips
one adds an arm, another stays on his farm

Polar opposites, yes they are,
but they do happen to share just one link
because both Zaphon & Arthur
never seem to think.

Unnamed poems - by Deuce, Diesel, and Archimedes

Poem 1

Upon a planet, green and blue,
the rodents scurry about
thinking up test to do on human,
and about cheeses.

Gouda is good but feta is betta.
A new planet earth was made,
but something was off.
Towels!!! They were missing.

Still the question remains
hidden within the recesses
Could it be?
That we may never know the question,
but the answer is 42!

Poem 2 (composed using only text messages we sent while composing Poem 1)

What is our poem about?
Why is bad poetry so hard?
(So should I rhyme or no?)
This is bad poetry!

Sorry!  Got distracted!
Muhahaha gag
Haha I love puns
I know!

What do you think a few more lines??
I concur
Whew!! That was worth the wait!!
Whose turn?

Ode to HHGG by Indy

I read this book: oh my oh my
Poor planet earth: I cried & cried
Did I find it funny? I truly tried.
I'm not a poet: you can't deny.
So this poem is over
A collective sigh!

NOVEMBER 15th MEETING NOTES

Howdy Novel Spirits, this will be the slightly tardy post for the business portion of our November meeting at Indy's Lodge. That place really does feel like a lodge. It's great there.

So let's see, what kind of business did we discuss..... well everyone is caught up on dues. And our club fund is starting to swell up quite nicely. If you don't see me next meeting, and our super secret squirrel book safe mysteriously goes missing, no need to worry your pretty little heads about either of us. I'm sure I won't be sipping rum punches, and putting it all on black at a casino in the Cayman Islands with the money safely laundered away in a high-yield, tax-sheltered, anonymous account at the Cayman branch of Gringotts Bank.

I was chastised for not having a drawing ready to submit to the group but I promised to have a rough draft ready to show at the December meeting next weekend. I am at least 67% sure that will happen.

And we welcomed Gilligan to his first meeting. We were happy to have him join us and he was able to last the entire meeting without running for his life from our constant ridicule, as appears to be our custom. Our very first message to him was chastisement for not ever reading this blog. And several followed thereafter. That's how we roll around here home boy. Diesel, please pass the word that we all provide and receive that treatment so it wasn't just him. It's not him, its us, so to speak.

We voted on an idea to select a Christmas themed book (which is not on our current list) in order to discuss at our December meeting. But after a British Parliament style debate, the motion was defeated by the slightest of margins. Maybe next year but for now, we will stay the course on our current list of books to read. And we don't have that many to go either!! We've been going strong for a long time now Novel Spirits! Well done, much respect.

We also agreed to do a "dirty Christmas" or "Secret Santa" type of gift exchange at the December meeting. I'm not too clear on the rules of the game other than we'll each get a book-themed gift, no more than $10 price tag and we'll do some sort of exchange I think. I've already selected my Thomas Kinkade art book for Deuce :)

I informed the group that I changed the theme/background of the blog. "And there was much rejoicing.......  yeaaaaaa" That Monty Python quote was in honor of Douglas Adams :) Don't worry everyone, even though the look of the blog has changed, it will still have all the great substance it always has. But seriously, if yall don't like it I can change it back.

Indy has updated her "Off the Grid" again so be sure to check that out if you haven't already.

Next book was selected and it was Deuce's first one, GRAY MOUNTAIN by John Grisham. So now I think we have all had at least one book selected! That is cool! Next meeting is at Cat and JB's mountain retreat on December 13th at 2:00pm. I hope Gilligan will join us and hasn't cursed all our names and fled the country.

And for a special treat, another post will follow soon with all of our Vogon poetry which we prepared for the meeting at Indy's Lodge.

Sorry for the late post and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again next weekend for the GRAY MOUNTAIN book discussion. I'm currently about 100 pages from the end. I need to talk about this!!!!!

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY BOOK DISCUSSION

Whew!  It's taken me some time to recover from those delicious (but not for the fainthearted) Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters!  Just kidding (except about the deliciousness).  It's been CRAZY around here - mainly work stuff, but I won't bore you with that nonsense.  Suffice it to say, I'm looking forward to our next meeting and a glass (or two) of wine!

Baron, being the nonconformist that he is, kicked off the meeting by getting a feel for how we all liked the book before launching into the book discussion.  So, it became apparent early on that there was a bit of a generational divide, with one group, let's call them the Froody Towel Bearers (Baron, Diesel, Gilligan, and me) who liked the book and found it witty/hilarious/laugh-out-loud funny and another group, we'll call them the Pontiferous Vogons (Deuce, Indy, Cat and JB) who very politely looked for nice things to say but clearly weren't Adams' number one fans.  One of the common criticisms of the book was the struggle with made up words and the difficulty visualizing some of the things described by Adams (i.e. a man with two heads and three arms).  Most (I think) agreed that it was a fun read.  Interestingly, Adams was a writer for Monty Python, which makes perfect sense, given the quirky humour (see what I did there) of both.

Then, to shake things up a bit, we shared some Vogon poetry, which will be posted in full in a separate post.   I think we really gave the Vogons a run for their money!  We talked about which characters we would be in the book.  I must have already started on the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because my notes don't reflect who said which character, but I noted that some popular choices were the mice/philosophers, Slartibartfast, Eddie the computer, and the sighing doors.  No one wanted to be Marvin, for obvious reasons.

One of the pre-meeting questions posed by Baron was what we think is essential in the way that Ford Prefect thought a towel was essential for a hitchhiker.  Diesel pointed out that after she read this book in high school she started carrying a towel, and has found it extremely useful.  Gilligan needs his toothbrush; Deuce needs shampoo; Baron needs a comb; JB & Cat both need cell phones; Indy stuck with the towel; and Diesel needs a knife.

Then, we roundly abused the DMV, banks, customs, airports, and the VA when discussing the Vogon mentality before shifting gears to discuss what book we'd like to write.  Baron wishes he would've recorded some of the hilarious things Chief and Boss said in their younger days to create a book of funny kids quotes.  Gilligan wants to be the next Webster and write a dictionary.  Staying true to our source material, JB wants to write a travel guide (but maybe not about the galaxy).  Cat, somewhat predictably given her alias, would write about cats.  Diesel had the idea of writing a book in the style of a journal written in the style of lab reports.  Indy would like to write about plants.

We concluded by reflecting on some of the great quotes from the book.  I think we all agreed that the book had some great lines!  For example:

While this book may not have been everyone's cup of tea (I'm just making jabs at the Brits left and right), we certainly had a great meeting.  Props to Baron for his creative questions/activities, which added to the fun.  I'm looking forward to another great meeting in a couple of weeks, Novel Spirits!  Stay warm!