book club

Alternate titles for this post: “That Time I Didn’t Actually Read the Book” and “Somehow I Still Manage to Make Everything About Vampire Diaries”.

Friday marked the second occurrence of Blogger Book Club, which the lovely Claire hosted this month.

Claire & Amy

Since Claire is an amazing hostess, she made a ton of gourmet treats for us. It turned out to be a rather good thing that she went so far above and beyond when it came to the food, actually, since almost every single of us in attendance ended up bringing wine. Evidently we were ALL very concerned with running out of wine this time, haha!

There was goat cheese dip (heavenly!), strawberry champagne cupcakes, almond cupcakes with caramel frosting, epic homemade sausage pizza that I unfortunately didn’t get any good pictures of, and so much more. Delicious!

Veggies and Sarah

The conversation flowed as we all caught up with each other on the happenings that we hadn’t already read on each others’ blogs, haha. Eventually we adjourned to actually, y’know, talk about the book, which as you may have already posited from the opening sentence of this post, I did not finish. I don’t really have an excuse as to why. It’s a good read, and I’m looking forward to finishing it even though I know what happens now (confession: I actually really love spoilers). I just let time get away from me this past month, and made the poor (but certainly not regretted!) choice of restarting the Hunger Games series on the flight down to Florida. Which obviously meant that in between squealing like the little girl I am in Harry Potter World, I did nothing else but read until I had finished all three books again. (Read them. Srsly.)

Jess eyeing the table of goodies.

Anyway, I sat politely while the rest of the girls who actually did their homework discussed the amazingness of the novel, before eventually somehow steering the conversation into more familiar territory. I’m pretty sure the nuggets that I contributed included many references to my impending Harry Potter-themed birthday party (it’s happening. You have been warned.) as well as VEHEMENTLY advocating for everyone to watch Vampire Diaries. At one point I actually leapt up from my seat in exclamation, that’s how serious it was. (Watch it. Srsly.)

Me and Rachel

So as it turns out, even though I’m the worst book club co-founder ever, seeing as how I didn’t actually read the book we chose, I can still have a rockin’ good time at book club. And I fully intend on demolishing this month’s pick! We chose The Poisonwood Bible for April’s read, which I remember hearing tons about but have never read. As always, if you’re in the area and aren’t already on the email list, let me know if you’d be interested in joining in!

Are you a book club aficionado? Quite a few of the girls in the club seem to belong/have belonged to multiple ones!

PS: Check out my friend Sarah’s new blog: The Sarahverse!

Good morning friends! I hope you had a splendiferous weekend and are happy with the outcome of the Super Bowl. Frankly, I’m just impressed with myself for actually watching most of the game. See? Miracles can happen, folks. 😉 Before I jump into the weekend update (and my very first book club experience!), I need to first and foremost wish a big happy birthday to my Mama!

Thanks for being born so that you could subsequently give birth to me. Also, you know, ’cause you’re awesome.

So! Where to begin with this weekend. It was a-hustlin’ and a-bustlin’ with activity, that’s for sure! Friday night things got kicked off with the first ever DC Blogger Book Club. Claire had the marvelous idea to start up a book club so that we ladies could be fancy and intellectual and have yet another excuse to eat food, and I hosted the first one!

Claire & moi

The book that was chosen for our first sesh was The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. It was a very touching story given from the perspective of a dog, so naturally I was all about it.

Sarah, Ericka, and Jess in the book club circle.

I thought it was a great conversation book since there were several polarizing characters, and I just loved the opportunity to think critically about something for once!

Ericka & my roommate Erin

Jess and Carly

Rachel and Amy

And can we talk about the food for a second? I mean, it was bound to be awesome — we are primarily food bloggers, after all. But Cheezy Pete’s, I’m not sure I was quite prepared:

There was cake balls and s’mores cupcakes and cookies and chips and dips and… oy. It was awesome, needless to say.

Nom. Oh yeah, and there was wine too.

I think next time I will focus more on providing more wine since clearly we’ve got the food part in the bag, hehe. We already have our book for next month picked out: The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. We’re still ironing out the details, but if you’re in the area and would like to join us for next time, let me know!

The rest of the weekend was, naturally, pretty much centered around last night’s Big Game. As if I hadn’t already eaten enough Friday night, there was a smorgasbord to dive into at the Super Bowl party I was at Sunday! Our contributions ended up being my mango guacamole (natch), and Cassie’s buffalo chicken bites (which were divine, even though I did a step wrong, haha).

Hoooooeeeee! Wednesday’s Weigh-in should be… interesting, given the extreme amounts of snackage that occurred, but maybe by then things will have evened out a little. And if not, oh well. It’s the Super Bowl, son!

Guff, what a post. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a doozy like this to put up! I hope that your weekends were as food- and fun-filled as my own. Are you celebrating a Giants win today, or mourning a Patriot loss?

Tags: book club

Book Club: The Sequel