Feb. 1, 2014 Meeting

first, a thanks to mary for hosting us tonight. your home looked so nice and the table was set beautifully. and sweet ruby.

we had some food highlights as well, starting with nancy's chocolate and cheddar cheese. yes, you read that right. from there it went to some fabulous gumbo from lonnie, complete with fresh crab on top! we followed that up with hilarie's brussel spouts with pancetta and kathy's ramen cole slaw. i brought some store-bought fried chicken that wasn't too bad, and we finished with almond/shortcake/chocolate bars from mary and cream puffs from helene. i'm stuffed!!

as for the books, maladies received 4.5s from all those who read it. they really appreciated how approachable the writer made the topic and covered so many facets of this disease, from advertising, to diagnosing and treatments, to genetics, despite a few areas that got too technical.

as much as lu and julie liked salvage the bones, kathy and nancy disliked it. they found the writing to be lacking and the character development thin. i fell somewhere in the middle. i liked the story and its view into the cycle of poverty and lack of opportunity, but the author's overuse of metaphors was distracting to me ("the rusted fridge in the yard was like a deviled egg with paprika"). i think we averaged out with a 3 on this one.

for our next meeting, we selected going clear by lawrence wright and the flamethrowers by rachel kushner. kathy will host the next meeting on march 15 and helene will bring the book selections.

thanks all for another fabulous gathering with some amazing women!