Maybe you've been wondering....

...about the Books and Brews book club that used to be on the old website that's always "full".

Well, it's a book club that started as a store thing and turned into my personal book club. Diana, Jean, Albert, and Suzanne and I have cohesed (not sure that's a word) into a unit that makes my month every month.

There have been other members over the years, but we're the core.

I pick the books. I'm a little dictatorial that way, but it takes the pressure off everyone else. And we're on a journey together through books that is amazing.

This group refreshes me and renews me and tonight was no exception.

The Natural History of the Senses is a book that is particularly personal to me. It's a guide to life for me so bringing it into books club was very personal.

I'll share a passage with you:


"When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn't matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life's many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probably doesn't matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of lady's slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the veined gaudiness of the leaf to move."

So, here's the deal. Start your own book club if you don't have one already.

If you do and they only talk about their ex-husbands and get tipsy, call me. I'll come to your book club and get you on track. Free of charge. I love to do that and I bring lots of free books and tote bags and stuff.

Book Club isn't going to change your life, but it will make it more meaningful if you treat it right.

Next month we're reading The Annotated Mona Lisa and bringing in printed off copies of our favorite paintings. One month we read about the history of perfume and brought in our favorite scents...(much to the dismay of the chef and owner of the restaurant where we meet). Book club doesn't have to be about books about cranky people with problems...though we've done tons of those too. Loving Frank was an awesome discussion.

So call me at the shop and I'll get you started. 804-788-1594.