A different kind of book club

Those of you who know me knows about my absolute passion for reading. I love it – in fact, one of my quirks (according to John) is that I will some mornings wake up and grab my book to read for about an hour before my alarm goes off. I devour books and chocolate with the same intensity, but I find I suffer much less caloric impact from reading!

John - being Mr Amazing - decided on the most perfect Christmas gift for the girls this past year when he started a virtual book club that me, my mom, his mom and his brothers’ wives belong to. The concept is that he would buy us all the same books, based on my recommendations, over the coming year. What a fabulous idea! On Christmas eve in Stockholm, he went out to buy us all copies of one of my favorite books and couldn’t find it at the book store he went to. Never one to be deterred, John worked with what he had, asking the shop assistant for the best seller of the season - Hanif Kureishi's 'Something to tell you' I got a copy as well as he hadn’t ever seen this book on the shelves at home.
Imagine our surprise on Christmas eve when we opened this book that no one had ever heard of! How inventive of him! His mom (as much of a book worm as me) immediately settled down with her copy and I got a little suspicious when I asked her about it and she didn’t really go into too much detail. 'It's fun,' she said. On the flight back from Sweden I tucked into my book and immediately realized why she had been a little evasive.

The theme of this book was completely sex-focused! I’m talking nipple-clamps, leather fetish suits and dingy London underworld orgy-type sex. And the main characters are middle-aged! Ha ha ha! After reading out loud to John from this book he had bought his sisters-in-law, his mother and his mother-in-law a couple of times, I stopped the torture! The poor man realized his mistake.

The next book will be much more above-board, I’m making sure of it!