Book Club, Awful Book But Great Cake and Meeting

The other night Book Bliss, our Shiloh Bloc book club had a meeting. For the very first time in the history of our book club, not a single solitary one of us had managed to read the entire book. I managed to get half-way though, which may have been the record. It was unanimously considered the worst book ever. We're all "clean-speaking" ladies and had trouble finding words in our pristine lady-like vocabularies to accurately describe Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow.

We just couldn't figure out the rationale for its winning of the Pulitzer Prize. You can call it the Barack Hussein Obama Nobel Peace Prize of Literature.

Even though the book was awful, it did inspire a fantastic discussion about what good literature really is and the difference in how men and women think. From now on we won't be choosing books according to prizes.

The awful book didn't ruin our meeting. We hold our meetings over potluck dinners, and we try to gear the menus to the books. But this time we refused to let the book spoil our appetites. We had a big fresh salad, salmon, deviled eggs, a cauliflower kugel, cheeses and pasta salads. I hope I didn't leave anything out. The best part was the dessert, though a few members had to leave before it was served.

Considering how few of us remained when the cake was finally served, we ate an awful lot of it.

Bli neder, no promises, I'll try to get the recipe. It was absolutely irresistible!