Selected for your reading pleasure by: Jo
In a secret ballot, we scored the book:
*
The wine we enjoyed this month was: Who can recall? With the discussion ending rather more prematurely than normal, how else were we to fill the time but with drinking? In memory-cancelling quantities, it seems.
Bob was the squadron’s Irish dancing champion six years running
Catch-22: When a book club discussion starts with the question, ‘Okay, did anyone finish the book?’, things can only go downhill from there. Especially when the answer from all but two of the attendees is ‘No’.
How did it all go so badly? A 20th-century classic. The WBWC’s well-publicised penchant for satirical World War II fiction. A reliable British summer keeping us safely inside, away from the rain and ready to curl up by the fire with a good book. The conditions seemed so perfect, and yet somehow it just didn’t click. Were we all just crazy for having wanted to read the book and therefore we knew didn’t actually have to read it, or were we sane because we knew we didn’t really want to read the book and therefore had to read the book, but decided to face a WBWC court-martial rather than compromise our principles? Or did we simply have too much else to think about, what with all of that shagging we’ve been doing lately in Rome, not to mention the brisk trade we’ve been doing selling Maltese eggs. Whatever the reason, it may be that ‘Yossarian lives’, but sadly not in the hearts or minds of the WBWC.
* Update: Marilyn is truly remorseful about that ‘no wine glasses’ rating. She really is. In fact, having persevered and finished the book nearly two months later, she promises that if she could do it all over again she would fill up four wine-glass rating icons to give Heller his due.
Wimbledon Book and Wine Club 