MY husband belongs to an all-male book group. Of course, they don’t call it a book group. They call it the Northern Westchester Men’s Literary Society. But it’s a book group. They claim the name is tongue-in-cheek but then, they also deny having a secret handshake, so who knows.
In any event, as a member of an all-female book group, I couldn’t wait to hear about his first meeting and to compare notes.
”Well?” I asked.
”Well what?”
”What did you eat?”
”What did we eat?”
”Yeah, what did he serve?”
My husband said: ”I don’t know. Maybe he put out crackers. I can’t remember.”
Immediately I grasped that there are book groups and there are book groups. My own book group has gotten to the point that a meal is served in keeping with the setting of the book. For instance, when we read Arundhati Roy’s ”God of Small Things,” we ate Indian. Louis de Bernières’s ”Corelli’s Mandolin” was discussed over Greek food. In fairness to my husband, his group first discussed Frank McCourt’s ”Angela’s Ashes,” so if they followed our tradition, they would have split a boiled potato among the 10 of them.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/07/nyregion/book-club-bonding-for-him-her-or-both.html?smid=pl-share