The Cat

First Friday of the month = bookgroup, or as friends and family know to call to it "A.A" - I joked "authors anonymous" but the reality of it is that rather more wine is drunk than books discussed, on a normal first Friday anyway.  March was different, and no, it wasn't because we've suddenly all discovered God and decided to take Lent seriously, but rather that we kept on talking about books.  Not The Book (that we'd all (in theory, as opposed to practice) read) but other books. 
"The monk who sold his ferrari" for instance, which we read ages ago and most of us hated although Rebecca still says it changed her life (and yet continues to pan it) 
"The hunger games trilogy", so looking forward to the film coming at the end of this month, although whether it comes here in O.V.* at the same time I don't know. 
"Birdsong", has to one of the most amazing books ever and yet there are still people (and bookgroup people at that) out there that haven't read it.


But of course we didn't only talk about books, we were at the Black Cat for almost four hours afterall, we're not that literary hardcore!  We were a big and diverse group, as usual I guess, Mexican, English, American, Australian, Indian, Singaporean and even some Germans, who joined us to practice their English (they'd overheard us last month - hard not to really seeing as we can be pretty loud) and then sat there silently, probably wondering what they'd let themselves in for as the conversation got smuttier and smuttier.


One of the more important discussions of the evening revovled around what to read next. This is always a tricky negotiation, some people suggest books that they've already read so that then they can "have a month off" and read whatever they want, some try to suggest books that have been either televised or made into films, but we didn't fall for Rebecca's cunning plan this time, personally I would try to suggest something I either have waiting to read or something that I'm desperate to read, whatever gets chosen it can't be too long because more than 400 pages can be tricky for some people to read in a four week period (although this month we're going five weeks seeing as the first Friday in April is Good Friday)  This month we're going with "The life of Pi", which I have read and absolutely loved, despite having put off reading it for almost two years (I just didn't like the whole idea of the story - how can a boy and a tiger survive together on a life raft adrift in the middle of the ocean?)  As there seemed to be more people there that hadn't read the book than had it seemed a good idea, and it is such a good book, I don't know thatI'll re-read it though.


I think I got home around midnight, Princie, Emma and I being the last to leave, Marianne only made it home by the skin of her teeth - she looked at her watch and realised she was going to have to run to catch her train and Michelle had left in such a hurry that she left her scarf behind (so now I have to remember to take it next time).  Good times!




* original version = not dubbed into German