September Meeting

Well hello there, bookworms! September has been a bit busy for us but we managed to read and successfully discuss The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. This was such a fun meeting for all of us!

A was the host and she just moved into this adorable carriage-house apartment. It's beautiful and we were all extremely jealous! Right before everyone arrived she texted us that she had to go pick up the pizza so she left her house unlocked for us (insert bug eyed emoji!!). We checked the corners and closets before making sure it was safe :) Katie popped in the taco dip and we were mesmerized by her oh-so-Pinterest-y kitchen while daydreaming of our own "someday apartments."

A arrived back with the pizza and she introduced us to sesame seed pizza crust. It is just delicious and it's a free upgrade at most pizza places! She also introduced us to her shy cat Cocoa. We poured ourselves some wine and we all sat on the floor while devouring our food. At this Wine & Spine meeting we had:

-sesame seed pizza

-taco dip

-chips, pretzels, and dip

-cheese & crackers

-cannoli dip

-chocolate chip cookies

-wine, of course

Please just look at the assortment of wines...

I mean, come on! We were in heaven! Thank goodness most of us wore leggings or stretchy pants because we definitely needed that extra room. We chatted about our lives, including our jobs, school, new boy updates, and changing planners. N and R (pseudonyms for two of our members) realized they are more alike than anyone thought was possible.

Eventually we started to discuss the book and we all agreed this was our favorite so far! Thanks to Zap's mom for the recommendation! LB loved the discussion questions in the back of the book; she was our discussion leader for the night. 

And of course, like always, we have to take a group picture to commemorate the meeting. 

We had to take a selfie on the staircase to fit us all in the picture :) Too many friends for a photo is not a bad thing to have!

*Review of The Rosie Project is coming soon!

Still Alice Review

Yes! We are finally reviewing Still Alice by Lisa Genova.

Like we said before, this book hit home for a lot of us because of our different families' situations. Many of our grandparents are older so we had so many text-to-self connections with this book! 

Disclaimer: only 3 of us successfully read this book in its entirety because of the extreme sadness. Therefore, this review is shorter than usual because only three people could comment on it :)

We all agreed it was sad. I mean, that goes without saying. The story follows Alice, who had a Ph.D in linguistics as she discovers she has early onset dementia. The book details how she and her family are coping with this heart-wrenching disease. We all agreed that John, Alice's husband, was not the greatest. Yes he had his shining moments and was somewhat supportive, but we hated how Alice's disease made him cold. We DID NOT support the ending at all. 

The relationship between Alice and her children was beautiful, especially between Alice and her daughter Lydia. Lisa Genova had such a way of writing the book that the reader felt every ounce of heartache and fear that Alice and her family felt. It takes a talented author to be able to create such a feeling. 

Although we enjoyed the writing style of Lisa Genova and the themes throughout the book, we still had a hard time getting over the sadness of the book. As hard as it is, we have to give Still Alice a 3-wine glass rating. Don't get us wrong, it was an excellent book. But the big picture ideas had us feeling more depressed about the world than before.

August Meeting

What is this? A blog post pertaining to a Wine & Spine meeting that happened relatively recently?

You bet!

This month we read Still Alice by Lisa Genova and discussed it at our book club meeting on August 18th. (Psst you can check out our meeting schedule by clicking here) This meeting was at Zap's house and let's just say that she takes the cake. Not only is her house gorgeous, homey, and cozy, but she has cats! One was perched on her coffee table like a centerpiece and another was hiding from humans. 

Zap made a taco bar! How modern and Pinteresty. We LOVED it. She had hard and soft shells, ground turkey, ground beef, all the toppings you could imagine, chips, salsa, and queso. Also she had about 15 bottles of wine to choose from. We all made ourselves a plate and headed out to her patio.

 Side note: her house is spotless and her patio table umbrella has built in lights. We were in awe to say the least.

This meeting started out the same: we ate, we caught up on our lives (new jobs, travel plans, boys, new school year, and sales at stores). Eventually we began discussing the book which only three of us read successfully. Two additional Wine & Spine members read Still Alice but were unable to attend this meeting :(

We gave those non-readers a summary of the book and started to discuss it. Like actually discuss it. We talked about the plot, the characters, what we would do in each character's situation, and the truth behind the book. This book hit home to some of us because most of our grandparents are on the "pretty old" side and sometimes they experience dementia or random forgetfulness. It also made some of us think "maybe I have early onset Alzheimer's." That's not true...yet! There was a debate over the two covers of the book. Some of us purchased the movie version of the book and others purchases the original cover...

  

It just so happened that the non-readers didn't like to read the book because of the cover. Their reasoning was "the mustard yellow just automatically made me feel sad and I didn't want to read it anymore." Okay guys.

Look for our book review on Still Alice coming soon!

This meeting was extra special because we had a new member join us! That's right, we recruited a member so we can't be all that bad! We'll call her A since she's in med school and may save your life one day. The best part is she offered to host September's Wine & Spine meeting which means she wants to stick around. Wow! The day of the meeting she texted us asking, "is there anything I should bring?" To which we responded, "A tolerance for swearing and a sense of sarcasm." I think we warned her appropriately :)

We finished our meeting by discussing a change in the next book, (check under the "2016 Books" tab!) cleaning up, and taking our usual picture :)

Girl on the Train Review

It's time to review our second book! Finally...

Girl on the Train was, what we thought it was supposed to be at least, a psycho-thriller that was a mystery. We knew there was a lot of hype around this book given that it's being made into a movie. But we had mixed reviews on this one. Many of us liked the change of pace from the Me Before You book. Hint: you can read that review here! 

Maybe it's just the procrastinating college students in us, but we thought this book could've been shortened by about half. Yes the information in the first 3/4 of the book is helpful for understanding the whole solving-of-the-mystery part, but honestly we could've gotten the picture if Paula Hawkins cut it shorter. 

We all agreed that Rachel was 100% crazy and we all felt bothered that she knew of her personal issues but did nothing about them. We all also thought that Anna was annoying but rightfully so--her husband's ex-wife was a little cray cray. Cathy was Rachel's only saving grace in the book. One of us said, "Honestly, Cathy wins the MVP award." #yougoCathy 

We really didn't understand the red-haired guy on the train with Rachel. We couldn't tell if him and Rachel had a fling one night or if she was confusing her stories again (wouldn't surprise us!) If we were in Megan's shoes, we couldn't figure out what we would do. She was in a rough marriage with a jealous and over-bearing husband but she had 0 family members to rely on. On top of that, she's still overcoming something from her teen years but not doing so in an appropriate manner. What we do know is that the ladies of Wine and Spine WOULD NOT cheat on said husband with multiple men. 

#50shadesofnothanks

Another quote from one of our fine bookclub members "the only good part of this book was when the story picked up in the last 20 pages." Okay so it was like the last 80 pages but still. It's pretty clear where our wine glass ratings fall on this one...

July Meeting

Well here we are! Our second meeting was a success:)

We all showed up to Nico's house around 7pm and the pizza and wings arrived promptly afterward. Thank god. We devoured our pizza and wings, drank some vino (of course, and chatted about life. Katie updated everyone on her love life, or lack thereof, and she gained the support of the Wine & Spine gals on a certain child of the devil ;) After about 45 minutes of chatter we moved into Nico's living room and sat on her comfy couches. Her house was freezing from the AC so we snuggled up with blankets. Katie took notes and Sarah sat on the floor, of course. We discussed the book, veered off for a little bit, came back to discussing the book, then talked about our fourth book. We couldn't believe we were already picking out our fourth book already! We are reading machines.

The MVP of this second meeting was Meg C for bringing a homemade cheesecake! You can see it in the picture below :)

Please notice the wine bottles

Side note: some of our moms and moms' friends are in very exclusive, long-running book clubs but they were in shock to find out we had a blog. Wine & Spine is moving forward! 

Look for our book review coming soon!

Me Before You Review

It's time to review our first book!

Recently we read Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. It was our first book of Wine & Spine and it was a good book to start off with! The book takes place in England which led some of us to read the dialogue in a British accent :) The story follows Louisa Clark as she starts her new job as a personal care aide to a witty and rude paraplegic. The book turns into a love story with an ethical conflict mixed in. The majority of our book club members enjoyed the book. The opinions ranged from "give this book five wine glasses!!" to a public shaming of the book on Twitter :) When forming Wine & Spine we knew that opinions would vary but that just makes for a better discussion!

***Spoiler Alert***

Many of us did NOT like the ending. It left us incomplete and mad at some of the characters. We couldn't help but feel heartbroken for our beloved character when she "wasn't enough". Although we disagree with the ending, some of us were happy the author didn't end with a cliche happy ending. She stuck to her decision. 

The book was easy to read. Because it's written by a British author, some of the British-lingo was a little tricky but could easily be figured out. We asked everyone to rate the book using our wine glass rating system and we took the average of the ratings...

We rated this book a solid 3 and a half wine glasses! Not bad for our first book club book, right?

First Meeting Success!

Last Wednesday we successfully had our first book club meeting!

When we first started thinking about a book club we honestly didn't know if it would turn out. Would people actually read? Would everyone think it was dumb idea? How long would book club actually last?

Many of our worries were put to rest! Of the nine members, seven and a half of us read the whole book! One member is in New York City for a summer internship and another member only read half (any guesses on who??)

Everyone showed up around 7pm and we started devouring the food. This meeting's menu consisted of cheese and crackers, chicken wing dip, spinach and artichoke dip, cookies, brownies, moscavitas and wine, of course. At this meeting we drank sangria :)

After an hour of catching up- you have to remember we haven't all been together or seen many of the members in over a month- we moved to the family room to start the discussion. We discussed the characters, the plot, and the moral reasoning behind the book. One of our members kept talking about the movie ;)

Once we had thoroughly discussed the book we decided on the location of our next meeting and what our third book would be. Then we took a picture because if you don't take a picture, it didn't happen :)

Look for our review of Me Before You coming soon!