Cards Against Huge Manatees.
So yesterday was the Eleven-Books Club meeting for Carmen's pick, The Poisoner's Handbook. I predicted that this meeting would be sort of a watershed, a line in the sand, because with any book club, I think you'll get those. This one was the meeting with the lowest attendance to date, & I think people waited until the very last minute to cram the book down. Maybe that is me projecting, since I just got it finished at the last minute-- no, I don't think so, Jenny finished Saturday morning too, & so did fordmadoxfraud. Terra didn't even get through the whole thing, & the five of us were the only ones who showed up. Back in college Brian once said-- with a healthy dose of humorous melodrama-- that "... running a game is an act of Will!" Goofy, but true; sometimes things just get teased out to vapor, & they'll fall apart unless you put your head down & push it through, black goat style. This is just one of those little humps. Anyhow, the book was well regarded! David & I both gave it ★★★, Terra gave it ★★★½ & it just getting to the good stuff, Jenny gave it ★★★★ & Carmen gave it a whopping ★★★★★! A lot of people agreed that the chapter of the man falsely accused of poisoning his wife-- Charles Webb-- was their favorite; Jenny thought the bit about Mike Malloy was too gleeful, David thought it wasn't gleeful enough. We all sat around eating hummus & Greek yogurt, woolgathering about poison. I have a hard time knowing what is common knowledge these days; I was asking people if they knew about the Citric Acid Cycle, which I call the Krebs Cycle-- nope, that is specialized knowledge-- what about mitochondria? That had better traction. I was just curious, since I have some idea how cyanide works because of that. I liked the part where she talked about radon's similarity to calcium a lot, as it turns out. Anyhow, after we were done talking about the book, we played Cards Against Humanity, which Jenny got me for my birthday. Some of them are...pretty misanthropic! It is basically a hateful Apples to Apples. Oh, we drank a bottle of the Paringa Sparkling Shiraz 2009-- I really like sparkling reds, their novelty totally works on me & I'm glad to see them on the shelf at my wineshop again. Amber's pick is the next book up on our agenda; After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh.