Our book this month was Somerset Maugham's The Skeptical Romancer, a collection of his travel writings from the 1930s. Most aggreed that Maugham's writings still seemed fresh although a couple of us rated the book only average. This was our second visit to Barbette, and we gave it outstanding marks. The next book is David Lodge's Deaf Sentence. Other suggestions were The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust, and Deadwood by Pete Dexter. Paul suggests the next book.
We are seven handsome and charming* guys who meet at a different restaurant every month or so, having read a book in common, and discuss whatever we want--generally the assigned book, but usually many other timely topics as well. We rotate the responsibility to suggest titles, but the group has the final say. Our book club rules: 1) Anything goes, fiction or nonfiction; 2) paperbacks are preferred; and 3) staying under 300 pages is desirable (N.B., we violate this one all the time). We rate all books and restaurants on a 5-point scale.* All other adjectives were vetoed.