The End

I'm sorry to say Model Book Club is no more. Disappointing for all sorts of reasons. Sounds like something positive might have come out of it (and offshoot of MBC), and for that I'm happy. But I'm sad thinking about what this could have been...

NUDGE at THE PEPPERMILL

Last night we met at Peppermill to discuss NUDGE. (Haven't finished it yet, by the way). Basically, we do support the libertarian paternalism advocated by the book's authors, but not because of any arguments they made on its behalf; we supported it before we picked up NUDGE. (We just didn't call it "libertarian paternalism.")

Our Second Book Is...

Yes, we made a mess in the store, but we DID clean it up. And then we bought four copies of…Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. (The books on the floor are the ones we picked up but ultimately decided against). In many respects, NUDGE is just about as far away from THREE BAGS FULL as you can get...although both books do have animal silhouettes on their covers...

Three Bags of Not Much

We'd hoped THREE BAGS FULL would make some good points about collective intelligence...but it didn't. Didn't do much of anything for us, actually. The only thing the book got us thinking about was exactly what qualifies as an "International Bestseller."

The Animal Farm allusions were pleasant, and the sheep's childlike misunderstandings were cute (i.e., because the priest lived in the "house of God," the sheep thought the priest WAS God)...but not pleasant enough and not cute enough.

Not recommended....unless you herd sheep. Then it'd be a fun read for you.

Photos from the First Meeting

Here are a few photos from our first meeting last week.

We met at Barnes & Noble on Rainbow Rd., and, as discussed, we selected the book Three Bags Full.

But before we did, we considered Sarah Vowell's Wordy Shipmates, Junot Diaz's Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, and Kurt Vonnegut's Look At The Birdie, and a couple of others (see photo). Tomorrow we plan to discuss Three Bags Full over wine at The Grape...and then we'll head to Borders to select Book #2.

The Stereotype

The stereotype is that we're dumb. The stereotype is that we don't read.

But we're not, and we do.

We're lucky enough to have more free time than most people, and many of us use this free time to learn.

Very excited for our second Model Book Club meeting on Monday. We plan to discuss Three Bags Full (initially slow, but picking up) ...and select our second book!

The Way To Keep It Exclusive

I get it: people want to join the club. But what a lot of these people don’t seem to understand is that this is an exclusive club, and that the way we keep it exclusive is by excluding people.

Look, if you want to join a book club and feel as though you’re part of something bigger than yourself, talk to Oprah. I think you can join her club by simply flipping on your TV. You can’t get any easier than that. So do that, buy yourself a copy of The Secret…and then maybe you can “will” your way into the Model Book Club. Good luck with that.

Yes, we'll be taking more applications in the future. But not right now.