Bar Book Club

I haven't reported on these in awhile because I had to miss a couple (one because one of my wife's patients was in labor, another because my daughter chose that night to throw an hour-and-a-half tantrum, etc.). I was happy to finally make it back to one.

Beer of choice: They've opened the Existential Porter up--woo hoo! That's always been my favorite, and they only have it for a month or two before there's another long wait. It's a very dark beer.

Book: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This is a memoir of a strange childhood, first out here in the West in some of the desolate towns you see in Nevada, Arizona, etc., and later in even more dire poverty in West Virginia coal country. Her father was seemingly brilliant but also an alcoholic who, along with the artsy, flighty mother, tried to make their unconventional life into a principled stand against convention. I was reading it as I traveled through some of those same places in Arizona (and with memories of last summer's trip through northern Nevada), so I found those parts especially interesting. The discussion was good.

Our next book will be The River Why by David James Duncan. This was a favorite book of mine in college--being more a baseball person than a fisherman, his The Brothers K was actually more up my alley, but I enjoyed this and pretty much everything by Duncan I could find. So I'm looking forward to revisiting it.