Searching in Vain for Gold at Tom's

Dinner and Acknowledgments

Despite our best intentions, the MBC couldn’t quite turn The Alchemist into gold when we met on December 2. Tom, our host for the evening, certainly tried—treating us to an excellent spread of Middle Eastern dishes: hummus, baba ganoush, shawarma, pita, and several bottles of his award-winning San Marino Cellars wines. 

The menu paired well with Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, which follows Santiago, a young Spanish shepherd, as he travels across North Africa in pursuit of his “Personal Legend.” Though fewer than 200 pages, the book traces Santiago’s journey from Spain to the Egyptian desert, where he ultimately discovers that the treasure he seeks lies not under the pyramids but back where his quest began. Along the way, he faces temptations to settle into comfortable lives, yet chooses each time to continue onward, guided by mystics, kings, and even bandits.

Our Review of The Alchemist

Tom described the novel as a pleasant, concise read. Having read it decades ago, he welcomed the opportunity to revisit it. He enjoyed following Santiago’s transformation—from shepherd to crystal merchant to desert traveler—and appreciated the book’s themes, particularly Santiago’s romantic attachment to Fatima and his choice to pursue his quest despite it.

Stan wished he could have read the book in its original Portuguese but still found the English translation reflective of other Brazilian literature centered on village life. He saw the book as a string of parables exploring the consequences of life choices.

Dean compared the novel to the Bible, reading it as an homage to the New Testament, especially as Santiago wanders the desert in search of spiritual clarity. He wondered whether the simplicity of the writing stemmed from the translation, but ultimately saw the book as a meditation on self-discovery and the idea that no single religion holds all the answers.

Terry had mixed feelings. At its best, he found the book a solid allegory; at its worst, an exercise in Christian-style positive thinking. He felt Coelho intentionally left room for readers to insert their own state of being and personal perspective.

Doug appreciated the story’s “go for it” sentiment but found the book more self-help than literature. Even so, he valued its affirming message that faith—whatever its form—can manifest in daily life.

Larry felt the book would have held more meaning for him in his youth. Now in his seventies, he sees himself at a life stage similar to Santiago’s ending—comfortable, grounded, and surrounded by family. For Larry, life’s journey eventually becomes less about personal dreams and more about those we love.

Dan didn’t rank the book among his favorites. Despite its brevity, he didn’t find it a quick read (though he appreciated that his edition included pictures). He couldn’t believe how often Santiago lost his money to swindlers. Still, he was glad to have read it, even if it left little impact.

Glen echoed the feeling that the novel is not literary fiction. He found the character development thin and thought the book would fit well in a high-school curriculum. He did appreciate its short length.

Garth felt the book attempted—but failed—to convey the idea that each person is connected to the greater world. He cited the scene in which Santiago “becomes the wind” as particularly clumsy, noting that such transcendent experiences can be portrayed much more effectively. He shared an example from his own life, recalling a similarly immersive moment while snorkeling in the Galápagos.

Paul approached the book hoping for encouragement about pursuing one’s dreams, and that is exactly what it provided. Though he didn’t consider it a great work, he felt he took something meaningful from it.

Andrew described The Alchemist as Eat, Pray, Love for teenage boys. To him, it read like a Hallmark-style guide to spirituality, with a smorgasbord of feel-good ideas designed to appeal to the widest possible audience. 

Jack sensed there was a message somewhere in the story, but felt it was obscured by its young-adult tone and a parade of familiar allegories. Though he found a few passages compelling, he was mostly relieved the book was short.

Rating The Alchemist

In the end, the MBC agreed that while The Alchemist didn’t spin itself into gold for the group—earning a subpar 5.4—it has certainly been a golden goose for Paulo Coelho, with more than 150 million copies sold since its 1988 publication. Our general recommendation: for readers just beginning their life journey, or for those still searching for their Personal Legend, this short novel may provide meaningful inspiration. Or perhaps the real lesson is simpler: sometimes the treasure really is buried right beneath the tree in your own backyard.

Up Next: The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck

Jack proffered a surfeit of excellent titles, among them Nathan Hill's Wellness; Ben Shattuck's short story collection, The History of Sound; Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish; Devil Makes Three by Ben Fountain; and Adam Ross' Playworld.  We opted for the shortest in page length not from laziness but more out of curiosity about a short story writer whose work has gotten rave reviews.  We'll see in January if they're deserved.

An Evening of Ordinary Grace at Tom's

Dinner and Acknowledgments

Krueger's novel about a mid-century Minnesota town featured exactly three meals: Gus' improvised spam and eggs, the boys' recurring bologna and PB&J sandwiches, and Mrs. Drum's tasteless tuna casserole.  It also featured one dessert:  ice cream.  To our relief, last Monday Tom chose the latter for our dessert and ignored the former in favor of a classic American menu:  grilled cheeseburgers, homemade potato salad and baked beans, and a mixed green salad.  All of it was terrific. Well done, Tom!

Our meal was also *graced* by the presence of two MBC alums, Garth and Peter.  Both men have been busy and both have been missed.  We were genuinely grateful to have them with us for the evening.  

Our Review and Discussion of Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Set in the summer of 1961, Ordinary Grace is the story of the Drum family's tragic loss, as seen through the eyes of its 13-year old narrator, Frank Drum.  Priming the reader for the tragedy ahead, the novel opens with two unexpected deaths: a child is killed while playing on the train tracks, and an itinerant is found dead by the river.  As the town grapples with--and gossips about--these two events, Frank introduces us to the members of his family: his Methodist minister father; his beautiful but brittle mother; his stuttering younger brother; and his musical prodigy sister, who is headed to Juilliard in the fall.  When death is visited upon one of them, it's the unexpected grace of ordinary moments that helps the rest carry on.

Our reaction to the book was predictably positive.  Yes, the plot was a little derivative according to Doug (thanks for the email!), with echoes of other family saga / coming-of-age tales.  Larry called it "Richard Russo light" (Russo's Nobody's Fool still sits atop our rankings) and, with Glenn and Doug, likened it to To Kill a Mockingbird's expose of tragedy and animus in small town America.  However,  our naysayers found much to enjoy, even if the ending was telegraphed (Glenn) and at least one character's personal revelation was trite (thanks for calling in, George!).

So, why did we like it so much?  Well, who doesn't like a heroic boy who throws the town bully into a reservoir, ignores his dad's well-intentioned commands, and singlehandedly solves the mystery at the end of the novel?  OK, I'm over-simplifying, but Jack was so taken by the narrator's precociousness that he gave the book his first-ever 10.  And Dean, who grew up as the younger brother in his family, was charmed by Frank Drum's fearlessness.  Ultimately, however, what captivated all of us were the simple moments in the story that uplifted both character and reader simultaneously. Gus making dinner for the boys, the "bad cop" letting Gus out of jail, the "bad Indian" showing gratitude, the wife-beater returning to church, Jake's cathartic rendition of grace, and so on.  All of these were the novel's extra-ordinary moments.

Our Rating of Ordinary Grace

The blurb on the back of Krueger's affecting novel about mid-century America proclaims that Ordinary Grace won the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award.  If we categorized our fiction geographically, I have no doubt that Krueger would lead our midwest rankings.  But with only our 1-10 numerical ranking available to show our appreciation, we gladly gave Krueger a fulsome 8.0.

Next Up:  Marching Powder by Thomas McFadden

Jack gave us a list that included Revolutionary Road, Remains of the Day, Ohio, and Wenner's memoir, Like a Rolling Stone.  We turned them all down in favor of Marching Powder, the true story of a British man's incarceration in a Colombian prison for drug smuggling.  We'll see next month how closely McFadden's story parallels Stan's youthful escapades in South America.

2021 Redux

 A summary of unposted titles from Spring 2021....

 January 2021  Host - Roy   

Subtitled A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, John Vaillant's account of a man-eating tiger in Russia's Maritime Territory gave us a fulsome education on the wrenching poverty that afflicted Russia's far east after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the endemic corruption that has devastated the tiger's habitat, and the history of the Siberian tiger and its brethren in Africa and the Indian subcontinent.  What it didn't offer was a concise story.  After a promising start, in which we learn about and applaud the tiger's killing of a local poacher, Vaillant veers off into lengthy digressions about Soviet-era politics, the Russo-Japanese war, the consumer economy in China, the plight of early man in sub-Saharan Africa, etc.  After occasional updates on the activities of the marauding tiger, Vaillant does return in the final 30 pages to finish the story of how the tiger was eventually tracked and killed.  He doesn't, however, answer the question implicit in the subtitle, as we are never quite sure whose survival is at stake in this most bleak of environments.  Rating: 7.2

 February 2021  Host - Peter  

While Peter did offer News of the World for our consideration, we clearly disappointed him by not opting for one of his more substantial titles (Far From the Tree-Solomon; The Known World-Jones; Necessary Lies-Chamberlain; and The Return-Matar).  At 208 pages, Paulette Jiles gave us (and Hollywood, since it was recently made into a film starring Tom Hanks) a short, endearing story about a Civil War veteran who's agreed to escort across Texas a young girl recently freed from Indian captivity.  The book contains all of the ingredients needed for a successful movie:  a sympathetic protagonist bound by a sense of duty, menacing bad guys (and few good ones for contrast), an arduous but successful journey, and a bond created during that journey that produces the novel's climax.  OK, so it was predictable and at times corny, but it proved an enjoyable read.  Indeed, that was the most common adjective used during our Zoom discussion.  Misgivings aside, we liked the Civil War and Reconstruction history, Captain Kidd's livelihood as a reader of news in a time of deep political polarization, and the brief but sympathetic treatment of Joanna's captors, the Kiowa, and their Comanche allies.  Rating: 7.4

April 2021  Host - Andrew  

Kevin Barry's novel about two aging Irish gangsters waiting expectantly one night at the Port of Algeciras has been on everyone's list of books to read.  And it's been on ours as well. Offered but rejected in the past, I resurrected it alongside Homeland Elegies (Akhtar), The Abstainer (McGuire), The Splendid and the Vile (Larson), and Fortune Smiles (Johnson).  For most, our selection was vindicated by an appreciation for Barry's poetic dialog, his unforgettable characters, and the building suspense he creates out of a series of flashbacks.  Were it not for our American ears, we might all have given it a full thumbs-up as Doug did.  But the fact that Barry had us running for the Irish-English dictionary slowed many of us down. While I found pleasure in reading quickly and ignoring the unfamiliar references, I was in the minority.  All of us, however, were engaged by the gangsters' back story and intrigued by the significance each of the two men places on the elusive Dilly (for whom they are waiting) and her mother (whose death they both grieve).  Rating:  7.8

May 2021  Host - Tom  

When Tom told us we were finally going to dine in person, and he offered us a choice of Krueger's This Tender Land,  Weiner's The Geography of Bliss, Proulx's Bad Dirt, and Sides' Hellhound on His Trail to accompany our meal, he figured he'd also toss in a book about food just for kicks.  And that's how we ended up with Anthony Bourdain's book about his televised quest for the most compelling meals in the most exotic places around the world.  After a 14-month hiatus, with only Zoom meetings to sustain our reading, the promise of real food and a discussion of same proved irresistible.

Let's dispense with the book first.  It featured interesting locales and passable writing, with a few compelling stories intermixed with just as many forgettable ones.  What was most memorable about the reading were the occasional anecdotes--his time in France with his brother, his reflections crossing North Africa, his depression in Indochina--that foretold Bourdain's subsequent suicide.  While many of the dishes were enticing (and some utterly repelling), Bourdain's travelogue was bittersweet from start to finish.  

Our dinner, on the other hand, was a pure pleasure from start to finish.  With 15 guys in attendance (including our good friend Mark), and a table groaning with BBQ chicken and ribs and assorted sides, we spent less time on the book and more time simply eating and catching up.  Fully-vaccinated and guided by the latest from the CDC, our dinner was the first large indoor gathering most of us have enjoyed since the onset of Covid.  What a terrific way to return to normalcy!  

At our 100th, Tom's the Gentleman

Dinner and Acknowledgments

Tom had a choice to make last night:  he could have focused his efforts on the cuisine of the fictional Metropol Hotel or he could have commemorated the Man Book Club's 100th book.  To our delight, he chose both. For dinner, we enjoyed his slow-cooked rendition of beef stroganoff--which proved a worthy competitor to the Tyler Florence version Dan served when we read The Fixer.  His stroganoff was accompanied by a "Russian" salad.  How Russian was it?  I'm not sure, because I was too focused on what came before and after. 

For an appetizer, Tom teamed up with Roy, who harvested fresh caviar from an 80-lb sturgeon he caught in San Pablo Bay.  (Naturally, the caviar was paired with Russian vodka.)  And for dessert, Tom made a delicious carrot cake topped with candles celebrating our 100th book.  Spasibo, tovarisch Tom!

Cake, caviar, and vodka...all for our 100th book

Our Review and Discussion of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

The conceit behind Towles' latest novel is simple:  a young Russian aristocrat, who is sentenced to "house" arrest five years after the Bolshevik Revolution, learns what it means to be a true gentleman in a society bent on ending class distinctions.  During his decades of confinement in the Hotel Metropol, Count Rostov mingles with party loyalists, foreign diplomats, KGB agents, and--most importantly--the hotel staff.  It is his relationship with the staff, and his adoption of an orphaned girl, that hastens Rostov's conversion from aristocrat to gentleman.  

Most of us discovered a very enjoyable story in Towles' surprise bestseller (although Dean and Jack found it slow going, and Dan actually disliked it). What we didn't discover was a traditional historical novel.  For those hoping to learn more about the Bolsheviks, Stalinism, or the rise of Nikita Khrushchev, few of those details seep into the narrative.  It is, as Larry described it, more akin to Eloise at the Plaza than conventional historical fiction. Indeed, I found myself wondering whether the upcoming paperback edition might get pitched to Young Adult readers. 

Towles' narrator begs our indulgence by addressing the reader directly and through occasional wordy footnotes.  While most of us found these asides amusing, Stan did not.  Pedantic and condescending were his words.  By contrast, Paul (who loved the book) found gems scattered throughout the novel, including references to two of our prior titles (The Tender Bar and The Maltese Falcon).  And Terry, who listened to the audio book, was entranced by the narration and  not distracted by the commentary.  He called it one of his favorite books of the year.  

Our Rating of A Gentleman in Moscow

Tom asked us to read Towles' novel because, after hearing about it from his wife, he was convinced we would enjoy it--all 462 pages of it. With a respectable 7.4 rating, he was vindicated in his choice (and in listening to his wife). 

Next Up:  Ski Weekend The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

We meet next on the ski slopes around Lake Tahoe.  No book has been assigned.  Instead, George and I look forward to playing host and repeating the fun we had last year.

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Editor's Afterword:  To correct the record...the ski trip disappeared when the snow disappeared.  So we convened at my house in February to discuss an old favorite--The Great Gatsby--at the request of our friends at Nutopia.  We meet next in March to discuss Mando's suggested title about the recent discovery of an ancient city deep in the rain forest of Central America.

Tom's Wyoming Evening

Dinner and Acknowledgments

No one caters western barbecue like Tom.  Last Saturday, he invited 35 of us to his house for an evening of smoked chicken, barbecued ribs, and a very tender brisket.  The eating was spectacular and so was the setting.  With tables set outside (for sunset views over Peacock Gap) and inside (to avoid the evening chill blowing in from the Bay), and too many side dishes and beverages to count, we were overwhelmed by Tom's generous hospitality.  We were also delighted to see Dorothy, whose recovery we've been cheering these last few months. Thanks for a fine evening indeed, Tom.

Our Discussion and Review of Close Range:  Wyoming Stories

A mea culpa is in order.  In my zeal to catch up with with several men and their spouses, I set aside my notetaking, asked few questions, and came away with only fragments of conversations about Proulx's most famous short story collection.

The common refrain of those at my table was the repeated reference to the quality of Proulx's writing.  Her turn of phrase, her uncanny eye for detail, her ear for dialog, her evocation of a fragile masculinity--all were enjoyed in this stunning collection of stories about life on the range.  Naturally, most of us commented on Brokeback Mountain, whose famously homosexual story line obscures a larger, deeper narrative about love, loss, aging, and other timeless themes.  Everyone was moved by the joy and sadness of the story and the despair of its principal character, Ennis.  One of my many favorite lines was Proulx's quick description of the failure of Ennis' marriage:  "A slow corrosion worked between Ennis and Alma, no real trouble, just widening water."

Among the other stories mentioned by many was Blood Bay, the story of a cold winter night, a pair of finely-tooled boots, two amputated legs, a trio of cowpunchers, and a nervous host.  Everyone was taken by the story's spare dialog and abbreviated ending.  And almost everyone found in the opening story, The Half-Skinned Steer, the gradually building suspense that is the hallmark of fine short form fiction.  For her confident prose and relentless insight, we gave Proulx a much-deserved 8.4, which puts her in the Man Book Club pantheon of greats (well, our current Top Five list).

Next Up:  The North Water by Ian McGuire

For September's meeting, Armando, ever the water wonk, gave us several choices but winnowed them to two:  The Water Knife and The North Water.  While the former is explicitly set in a warming world with severe water shortages, the latter is its near opposite, with a cast of murderous sailors hunting whales off the coast of Greenland in 1859.  We chose Ian McGuire's cold, harsh world of predators--both natural and man-made.  Let's hope this most manly of adventure stories lives up to the hype that accompanied its publication earlier this year.

The First Trimester of 2015: No Snow But Some Diverting Reads

Like last year, January’s ski trip was a bust.  Too little snow too early in the season canceled our Sierra excursion. Instead we met in February at Tom’s to see if Irving Stone’s 1938 work of biographical fiction (think The Agony and the Ecstasy, only much earlier and mercifully shorter) justified its selection as our first title of 2015. The verdict on Sailor on Horseback:  with a middling 6.4 rating, it didn’t quite deliver the goods. It certainly wasn’t the subject matter, as we all have a soft spot for local favorite and hero of Tales of the Fish Patrol, Jack London.  (Indeed, Irving Stone himself was a San Francisco native.)  Maybe it was the dated writing, the clutter of detail, or—as Stan put it—the fact that Stone “kept droning on,” but no one was actively applauding when the votes were tallied (except perhaps Tom, our resident Jack London fan).  No matter.  All in attendance enjoyed Tom’s food and wine pairings.  (Was it really Mondavi, Tom?)

March had us only two years removed from Sailor, as we brought back another local writer and past MBC author, John Steinbeck, but this time on an adventure down to Baja with his 1940 travelogue, The Log from the Sea of Cortez.  With fellow traveler and field biologist Ed Ricketts providing some of the narration, Steinbeck took cover from the furor over The Grapes of Wrath by embarking on a collecting expedition to Baja California with a notebook in hand.  His descriptions of marine life were frequently interrupted by a variety of philosophical and humanistic meditations.  Stan called them rants, and for once I had to agree.  While I criticized his constant riffing as self-indulgent and repetitive, others were much more forgiving. Larry and Glenn found the digressions refreshing, and Paul who likened these digressions to those in Moby Dick found enough to keep himself reading the interesting parts.   All of us, however, enjoyed Armando’s stories of his field work in the Sea of Cortez and especially the slide show of his most recent trip just a week before our dinner.  As an added touch, Armando’s main course (blue fin tuna) was caught, cleaned, and packed in the very locale described by Steinbeck. For that we gave Mando a huge thumbs-up and Steinbeck a very respectable 6.8.

For April, Doug convinced us to give short form fiction a try, and he sealed the deal when he offered to prepare and email us a packet of short stories with a combined page count of less than 100!  Not only were we engrossed by his selected stories (George Saunders’ Sea Oak took top honors in the length-of-discussion category), but every one of us claimed to have done the reading (impressive, even if some were embellishing a little).  With selections from Jess Walters (Anything Helps), Tom Perrotta (The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face), Dennis Lehane (Until Gwen), Steve Almond (Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched), and others, there was something for everyone.  With such impressive writing, I had high hopes our next selection would be from one of these men, but George tortured us and then steered us back to Gabriel Garcia Marquez (recall, we read News of a Kidnapping) and the work that sealed his Nobel Prize, Love in the Time of Cholera. In June, we'll find out whether a 50-year deferred romance in the Caribbean piques our interest as much as Bernie's lost appendages did in Sea Oak.

Tom Takes Us Down the Colorado

Acknowledgments
Last Monday, Tom did what John Wesley Powell was unable to do:  he fed his men exceedingly well as he took them on a journey down the Colorado River.  How?  He prepared Julia Child's ineffable boeuf bourguignon, paired it with roasted potatoes and two salads (thanks to John for contributing the garlic radicchio), and concluded with man-size helpings of his legendary strawberry shortcake.  With bottles of the always drinkable San Marino Cellars followed by Roy's distilled spirits, the meal washed down well.  As for the book, well...see below.

The Book
Powell's account of his 1869 expedition down the unexplored canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers made for tough reading.  According to Wallace Stegner, Powell publicized his expedition hoping Congress would appropriate funds for further exploration of the Colorado River.  But to broaden its appeal (and, I dare say, extend its serialization in Scribner's), Powell prefaced his account with a lengthy exposition on the geology of the region, inserted pictures and commentary on random native artifacts, and embellished his diary notes with details from later expeditions.

Our 4.3 rating says it all.  Those who read all of the 400-page Penguin edition (fewer than half the group) were disappointed to learn that Dean and Dan had managed to find a 135-page hardcover edition containing only Powell's account of the actual expedition.  Gentlemen, thanks for sharing.

Bitterness aside, we were taken by the arduousness of Powell's trip (how many times did they lose their oars and have to fashion new ones from downed trees?), the primitive instruments (who knew you could calculate altitude with a barometer?), and the meager rations they subsisted on (only tobacco and coffee were in generous supply; Powell's men had their priorities).   As a self-funded, one-armed Civil War veteran supported by a ragtag group of men, John Wesley Powell's exploration of the Colorado frontier was truly remarkable.  His account, however, wasn't.

Next Up
We dine next at Roy's, armed with (unabridged) copies of The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje's recent follow-up to his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient.  We will decide if this novel is--despite the afterword's disclaimer--a thinly-disguised memoir of Ondaatje's boyhood journey from Ceylon to England.

In Vino Veritas: Tom Wins Our Judgment

Acknowledgments
In Taber’s account of the 1976 California v. France wine tasting, the assembled French critics approached the task of comparing French and California vintages with typical Gallic hubris. And they came away chastened by the scores they awarded to the Chardonnays and Cabernets from California. We, on the other hand, were never in danger of losing. At Tom J’s elaborately arranged dinner and tasting on October 21, it was provincialism at its best: all California wines, all night long. (Some of us were willing to make an exception for an especially fine Australian Shiraz, but after extracting it from its display case Peter would only let us fondle his bottle of Penfolds 1999 Grange.)

As a prelude to his fantastic meal of grilled stuffed game hens (to say nothing of the accompanying pasta and salad), Tom set up a blind tasting of three winning Chardonnays from this year’s Sonoma Harvest Fair. With each bottle reflecting a different market tier (approximately $10 v. $20 v. $40), the test was whether price really does matter. It didn’t. We voted in favor of Taft Street Winery’s 2006 production. And the 2007 Sebastiani, at the low end, fared almost as well.

Our two guests for the evening played excellent supporting roles: Charlie ably backed up Tom in the kitchen (a critical function given the rising impairment levels in the group), while Dennis supplemented Tom’s wine tasting with several outstanding bottles from Lewis Cellars, where he and his family have developed a fine reputation among midsize vintners in the Napa Valley. In addition to serving a Chardonnay and several excellent Cabs, Dennis answered our many questions about the business of winemaking. Thanks to both of these gents for spending the evening with us. And thanks, too, to John for making an exquisite flourless chocolate torte to put an exclamation point on Tom’s meal.

As if we didn’t have enough wine to sample, Tom challenged us to pair up and bring an especially good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. I can’t recall all of the labels, but the highs and lows stand out. Doug’s bottle of Chimney Rock (thanks for letting me pair with you, Doug!) was universally lauded as exquisite, and Dean/Dan/Tom’s garage wine (with fermentation help from Roy) reminded us why these guys haven’t quit their day jobs.

The Book

For the uninitiated, the early part of Taber’s book about the 1976 Paris wine tasting gave us a badly-needed history of winemaking in the Napa Valley as well as a primer on the rarefied traditions still extant in France. How many of us knew that the classifications (e.g., grand crus, premier crus) given to French wineries in 1855 remain virtually unchanged today? Taber also provides a lengthy history of the two California wineries that took top honors in 1976. Both, we learned, were led by immigrant visionaries in a valley that had been making wine for almost a hundred years, but good wine since only the 1960’s.

Although Taber’s tedious summaries of the harvest and crush process could have used some pruning (indeed, Tom A felt that the entire book could have been condensed to article length), he eventually lets us in on the real surprise of the story. Both Chateau Montelena and Stag’s Leap were upstarts, with newly-recruited talent (Mike Grgich) or self-taught winemakers (Warren Winiarski) and little commercial success before the Paris tasting put them on the map. After his description of the climactic tasting at the Paris Inter-Continental Hotel, Taber commences a survey of the development of winemaking in other parts of the world. It was at this point that many of us stopped reading and started complaining.

In retrospect, we should have done as Charlie and Dan did and watched Bottle Shock, a loose adaptation of the book, replete with sexual undertones notably absent from Taber’s account. Or we could have read The Billionaire’s Vinegar, which Doug applauded and which Tom J originally recommended. Since we did neither, we prided ourselves on our expanded knowledge of local oenology, and we breathed a sigh of relief that the author was in Palo Alto and unavailable to join us (thanks for trying to get him, Dan).

Next Up

In search of a new genre, Roy assembled a list of classic true crime dramas: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, and Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter. Mailer and Bugliosi were both too long (clever move, Roy), so we chose Capote’s carefully observed account of a murder in rural Kansas and its wider impact on America in 1959.

Tom's Tortillas and More

Acknowledgments
Last night Tom fed us well and single handedly too. Okay, aided briefly by his sous-chef (John prepared the guacamole), and closely observed by a hungry Robin and Casey, Tom turned out a meal worthy of a Mexican Tenksgeevee. His enchiladas, chopped anchovies on Caesar, and Spanish rice were complemented by an exquisite homemade Mud Pie. The frozen hand emerging from the dessert was a delicious bit of culinary symbolism.

(Peter/Dean, since you didn’t finish the book, we’ll let you in on a secret: Garth’s high-concept dessert suggestion, which Tom executed so well, is explained in the last two pages of the novel. While you're at it, try to figure out why John arrived wearing an electronic ankle bracelet and Stan was sporting huaraches.)

Tom, thank you for hosting us with such grace and generosity. Fifteen bookmen arrived hungry and went home satisfied.

We welcomed Glenn to our group last night. He was an inaugural MBC member, but his yearlong stint in Colorado has prevented him from joining us until now. Now that he's back in Marin (and cycling with Terry), we know all's well in his and our world.

The Book
Our run around the table produced a surprising verdict on Tortilla Curtain: we all seemed to like the book enormously, but there was no scarcity of criticism. I put the book in my Top Ten, but learned that most of you quarreled with the novel’s accelerated ending (glad you read it this time, Roy), the implausible attitudes of the principal characters (including Delaney’s rapid conversion to the dark side), Boyle’s failure to capture more of the complexity of the migrant worker experience, and an alleged lack of originality (Larry, I'm putting words in your mouth). To all of your criticisms, I say rubbish! I’m still taking T.C. Boyle to the proverbial desert island (but maybe I’ll take Stan’s suggestion and bring along Water Music instead).

Despite the quibbles over tone and style and substance, the book pulled a 7.5 rating, our highest to date. Even Jack, voting absentee, gave it a 7. (Note to Dan: Jack missed because of a conflict NOT involving his wife or mother-in-law!)

In the Painful Parallels department, we have in our midst a self-described Mexican naturalist (Armando); two former SoCal denizens, one raised outside the proliferating gated communities (Glenn) and one inside (John); our carpetbagger from Rolling Hills Estates who declined to state on the gate issue (Terry); an Australian whose convict roots and dubious morals make him our poster child for immigration control (Peter); and the usual polyglot assortment from the Emerald Isle, eastern Europe, and Asia, whose ancestors were despised by the immigrants who preceded them. As Terry asked us, who will the Mexicans despise 50 years from now?

Next Up
In a serious breach of protocol, Roy proffered only one book for our consideration. But since our straw vote revealed that most were satisfied with the choice, we all agreed to read Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for next month. For later consideration, George recommended Updike’s Rabbit series and others mentioned a desire for non-fiction (including Glenn, who touted The Last Place on Earth; Armando, who liked America in 1492; and George, who proposed a title (name?) about a 19th century US expedition around the world). Keep bringing your recommendations to future meetings.