must remember to mark calendar

So I was wrong. The book group met tonight -- not last Monday. Tonight's book was Fast Food Nation.

We were the fourth and fifth people to arrive. Two more joined shortly after. Last time there were only four, so this was progress.

The first topic was whether or not to change the day of the meeting. I said (and B agreed) that it was a little hard to speak for people who weren't here. After some back and forth it was decided to send out a message and survey if Tuesday worked better.

The discussion was surprisingly good. This was the first time I had discussed a non-fiction book. Our group at Borders was a fiction group. It was interesting that most people in the group already weren't big fast food consumers. In fact I would say really only one person (the youngest) had been to a McDonalds in the last year. For a few (including myself), it had been more like 20 years since they had been regular customers of the golden arches.

A large part of the discussion focused on the idea of The American Dream, and if it was possible to get to that level without there being some victims along the way? Someone brought up Ben & Jerry, and how they had a policy that said that the top person could make no more than seven times the bottom one. Of course, they recently sold the company. Whole Foods has a similar policy. But over the last 25 years or so the gap between the bottom and the top has widened dramatically for most corporations in the US.

We also discussed how it was great that a high school drop out could rise to the top. Most believed that it would be a lot tougher to do so these days. We talked about how we live in a society in which people are not held accountable. That we have become rude (as in why do people make a mess in the laundry room and not clean up after themselves).

In the end we seemed to conclude that as Dickens said, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times". And isn't it great to live in a country where we can debate such issues.

Overall I am glad that I went. Our book next month is about the flu epidemic of 1918 that took the lives of 40 million people. I had no idea. Apparently this has become a popular item on Amazon with SARS and all. Should be fun.