One thing to know about our club:
Our husbands or fiances were all in a fraternity together at the University of Illinois. We started Intellectu-Gals as a pseudo-excuse to get together, chat and enjoy good food and wine. The enjoying good food and wine part has somewhat taken over, which led our husbands to joke that we are a wine club whose members just happened to have read the same book.
Author we'd most like to meet:
Greg Mortenson ("Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time") because we think he'd be fun to have a beer with, and Jodi Picoult ("My Sister's Keeper") so that we could discuss her twist endings.
Worst excuse anyone's given for not reading an assigned book:
After reading "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer, some of our members got so wrapped up in the series that they skipped the next few books. Most of us did not read "The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family" by Laurence Leamer because of the number of pages (960).
Average time we spend talking about a book before conversation swerves off into politics and family issues:
We normally talk about the book for
30-45 tangent-filled minutes — three minutes on the book, three minutes off topic, rinse and repeat.
Five books we've loved:
"Sarah's Key" by Tatiana de Rosnay, "The 19th Wife" by David Ebershoff, "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer, "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini and "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger.
What book is next:
"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson