What is it about sharing a room with a handful of other like-minded book fiends that makes me so incredibly happy? I LOVE book group. I didn’t even read the book, one of 2-3 times I haven’t done so in 4 years, so I didn’t feel too guilty, and the conversation was so interesting and went so many interesting places. The book was Beyond Belief by V.S. Naipaul, whom I just haven’t been able to get into despite 3 tries, but sleepyhouse made an excellent case for one of his earlier books that I’m going to look up. We had an excellent discussion about Islam as a state and a religion, moving neatly into fundamentalism in America, with a segue into Swedish societal norms, and finished up with personal near-death disaster stories. It was a small group this time, unusually, but I actually thought it was better as there wasn’t so much interruption and break-out conversations.
Bad things today: A warning lamp came on in the car, which requires a trip to the shop 🙁 Expensive in our experience, and when I got home found Anders watching a TV that had a circular shadow of pinks, purples and greens instead of the correct colors, which requires a trip to the TV repairman (both of these things have happened before). MORE expenses, just when we REALLY REALLY don’t need them. 🙁
argh
Good things today: The power was only off for 3 hours and the ice in the freezer didn’t even have time to melt, (meaning the food is okay). I got out of a meeting at work I was dreading because of the power outage (although I have to have it tomorrow…scheming how to get the power to go out again…) Book group.
Considering that I am the only person on LJ to have “sudden bursts of enthusiasm” listed as an interest, I found this post on the word origins of enthusiasm to be fascinating.