Beechville Book Club

Unfortunately, the founding members of our neighborhood book club ended up taking a work transfer to Victoria so we've been floundering a bit this month. We did do a book in December, and since they were leaving we opted to let Marc chose the book since he hadn't had the chance yet and was just dying for us all to read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

His wife tried to poo-poo him...haha...but I backed him up and thought it's probably the only time in my life I would even consider reading the book and wanted to do it. Isn't that what book clubs are supposed to do...get you reading something you might otherwise not? Marc was the only official male member of the group (one of the other hubbies jumps in from time to time) so it was hard for him to have support on this one, but we all rallied and took one for the team.

The problem was actually getting our hands on a couple of copies of the book. Surprisingly it's hard to come by the full size version (it's called a trilogy in five parts and is a fairly substantial book). We had agreed to at least try to do the first two parts...and more if we could swing it. I tried to go to Chapters and buy it right away, but no such luck. I also looked at another book store in the mall (Coles?) and they didn't have it either. Then I went on holiday to Victoria, so I tried looking at the Chapters there...they had it but it was $35...I didn't want it that bad. At that point I decided maybe just to buy the first part in a single edition but of course they didn't have it....they had parts two and three, but not one. My friend even checked a used book store for me and they didn't have it either. Apparently it's popular! Had I known it would be so hard to buy I would have checked it out of the library before I left....haha...except I found out later that one of my other club members did that and she had to wait until like Dec-20th to get it.

So anyway, on New Years Eve I still hadn't found it (our meeting was to be like Jan-6th) so I borrowed Marc's copy. I made it about 3/4 way through the first part by the time our meeting rolled around. I felt so bad for Marc because two people didn't show up, his wife harassed him the whole time (lovingly of course!) and the other two of us hadn't even done half of the reading assignment. The discussion ended up mostly being him telling us what happened.

I was sufficiently interested though. It's quite a funny book...totally nuts really....but it was just starting to get to a good reading place when I ran out of time. My intention is too keep reading. I even got Marc to leave me his copy and promised to mail it back to him...but of course I haven't touched it since. In fact, I haven't read a page of anything in three weeks....weird. Because they were moving and a couple of members hadn't attended we didn't plan another book and even though I have about a dozen other books to read I just haven't been into it.

Time to change that.

I rallied the book club troops and I think we've decided on The Shipping News to be read for the first weekend in March, so I'll have to confirm and pick that one up this weekend. Back to some good old fashioned stimulation of the brain!