Book Was A Bust!

So, Our Book Club met last night, and we even had our new member Amy. However, the consensus on the book, Little Chapel On the River: a Pub, a Town, and the Search for What Matters Most by Gwendolyn Bounds, was that, aside from being non-fiction, the book just didn't have that much to offer.

Sure, there were good points, and there were certain parts we actually liked, but no one LOVED the book. We didn't like that Bounds told stories about her grandparents but then stopped, sort of without notice. We liked that we were reminded of such an important event in history, September 11, but we didn't like that Bounds never returned to it. Navel-gazing aside, a sense of how she felt, why she wrote the book, why she needed to leave New York City all may have made the book more compelling. We liked some of the characters...we just didn't care about them, and we weren't really sure they were believable.

But we did answer the question about what matters most...and it's a place of belonging. But here's where the jury was still out. Could a place such as Guinan's Pub & Country Store really exist?

Do YOU have the place that, when you walk in, you just feel at home? And, do you have to grow up in a city in order to have that sense of belonging?

As a group we have a couple of those places -- restaurants, mainly -- and we're grateful to the people there who make us feel that way.