Howdy! Sorry not to have responded sooner... I have been travelling like mad - I have slept in my own bed (london version) 4 nights out of the last 26. I'm leaving Las Vegas, the last stop, in about 3 hours to head back to Boston (woot!) but email access has been hard to come by.
I suppose I should follow Christina's noble example of bowing out of bookclub due to inability to reliably attend, but, well, I'm not noble, and I don't wanna quit bookclub. Bookclub, I just can't quit you... but nor can I attend the next meeting (just missing it by a hair!), so a vote would have been inappropriate anyway. We've never evicted anyone from bookclub, have we?
Hope you all are having fun - I miss our discussions!
k

Winner is....
OK, I think everyone had a fair chance to vote, so based on the the responses I got....

ELLA MINNOW PEA

is the winner! In fact I think almost everyone had it on their list somewhere. I hope everyone likes it - I liked it so much the first time I will definitely re-read it for our discussion next month. But then I am nerdy about language stuff like alphabets and spelling.... So anyway, we'll meet Tuesday, June 26? See you then!

Any update on the winner?

for GWTW fans...

Rhett, Scarlett and Friends Prepare for Yet Another Encore

By MOTOKO RICH

It’s taken 12 years, three authors and one rejected manuscript, but tomorrow will be another day when “Rhett Butler’s People,” the second sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind,” is published this fall.

Less a conventional sequel than a retelling from Rhett Butler’s point of view, the new book, to be published by St. Martin’s Press in November, is written by Donald McCaig, a former advertising copywriter turned Virginia sheep farmer who has written well-reviewed novels about the Civil War.

The book, at a little over 400 pages, will be a slip of a novel compared with the original, which ran more than a thousand pages. “Rhett Butler’s People” covers the period from 1843 to 1874, nearly two decades more than are chronicled in “Gone With the Wind.” Readers will learn more about Rhett Butler’s childhood on a rice plantation; his relationship with Belle Watling, the brothel madam; and his experiences as a blockade runner in Charleston, S.C.

Most of all, readers will get inside Rhett’s head as he meets and courts Scarlett O’Hara in one of the most famous love affairs of all time.

With the publication of “Rhett Butler’s People,” St. Martin’s will at last have the chance to begin recouping the $4.5 million advance it agreed to pay the Mitchell estate for the right to publish a second sequel. The publisher has high hopes for the book’s commercial prospects, with an anticipated first print run of more than a million copies.

But the new book is also, in some senses, a bid for redemption by the estate of Margaret Mitchell, who died in 1949 and steadfastly refused to write a sequel to “Gone With the Wind” herself. When Alexandra Ripley’s “Scarlett,” the first sequel, was published in 1991, it was a blockbuster best seller — it has sold more than six million copies to date worldwide — but suffered a critical drubbing. (Five years ago Ms. Mitchell’s estate unsuccessfully tried to block publication of “The Wind Done Gone,” Alice Randall’s unauthorized parody told from the perspective of a slave whose mother, Mammy, was Scarlett’s nanny.)

This time around, the lawyers who manage the business affairs of the Mitchell estate aimed higher. “What we were most interested in was a product of high literary quality,” said Paul Anderson Jr., one of three lawyers who advises the estate, held in trust for the benefit of Ms. Mitchell’s two nephews. “We were looking for something not to make a quick buck, but something that would be lasting.”

The search for the right author was an epic saga of its own. It began in 1995, when the estate commissioned Emma Tennant, an English novelist who had written a well-regarded sequel to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” to write a sequel to the sequel of “Gone With the Wind.”

Ms. Tennant’s contract specified that she retain Ms. Mitchell’s tone, vision and characters. It also forbade Ms. Tennant from including “acts or references to incest, miscegenation, or sex between two people of the same sex.”

When Ms. Tennant submitted a 575-page manuscript, entitled “Tara,” it picked up where Ms. Ripley, who had set much of “Scarlett” in Ireland, left off, returning Scarlett to Georgia.

Unfortunately, the lawyers for the estate and editors at St. Martin’s thought it was too British in sensibility. They fired Ms. Tennant and legally prohibited her from ever publishing her manuscript.

Stranded without an author, the estate and St. Martin’s next approached Pat Conroy, the Southern novelist best known for “The Prince of Tides,” who had written an introduction to the 60th-anniversary edition of “Gone With the Wind.”

Thorny contract talks ensued. Concerned that the estate’s lawyers would impinge on his authorial freedom, Mr. Conroy joked publicly that he would open his sequel with this line: “After they made love, Rhett turned to Ashley Wilkes and said, ‘Ashley, have I ever told you that my grandmother was black?’ ”

Mr. Anderson, who was not involved in negotiations with Mr. Conroy but whose father was, said the estate never would have put editorial constraints on Mr. Conroy. “Everyone understood that there would be nothing in a contract with him that would prohibit him from including miscegenation or homosexuality, if that’s what he wanted to put in there,” he said. “He, after all, is an artist.”

Mr. Conroy remembers the negotiations differently. In an interview he said the estate’s lawyers never stopped trying to prohibit him from including miscegenation or homosexuality, or from killing off Scarlett O’Hara. In the end, Mr. Conroy said, he pulled out of talks with the estate because he did not believe he would be given true editorial freedom.

With nothing to show after four years, St. Martin’s publisher, Sally Richardson, and executive editor, Hope Dellon, began searching for a new writer. Finding a promising candidate proved difficult.

Finally, Ms. Dellon walked into a bookstore and found a copy of “Jacob’s Ladder,” a Civil War novel by Mr. McCaig.

She liked what she read, and called Mr. McCaig, who said he had never even read “Gone With the Wind.” Once he did, he was intrigued. Right from the start, he said, he knew he wanted to tell the story from Rhett Butler’s point of view, against the backdrop of the Civil War.

“The Civil War has a tremendous moral and emotional force,” Mr. McCaig said in a telephone interview. “You take the Civil War out of it and have the epic love story and everything else is kind of ‘oh dear.’ ”

Mr. McCaig took on the commission, he said, out of “six parts hubris and four parts poverty.” He declined to disclose how much the estate was paying him.

He spent six years researching and writing, digging in historical archives and going out in a skiff in Charleston Harbor to re-enact Rhett’s efforts to get through naval blockades, nearly running aground on a breakwater one night.

His wife, Anne, produced 100 pages of meticulous chapter outlines for “Gone With the Wind,” so that Mr. McCaig would be able to follow the original’s timeline as he wrote.

He delivered chapters to his editors as he finished them. Occasionally the lawyers for the Mitchell estate would be invited to weigh in as well.

“It was a rocky road,” Mr. McCaig said. “There were a lot of people involved and a lot of different needs. It’s a much more complex environment than most novels are written in.”

Mr. Anderson said the estate’s lawyers, having learned from their experiences with Ms. Tennant and Mr. Conroy, tried not to interfere with the content of the novel too much. Bowing to changing mores, Mr. McCaig’s contract acknowledged the necessity of “modernizing the treatment of the sensitive areas of race and sex to reflect the changes in public attitudes during the period of more than 60 years since the publication of the original novel.”

In the end Mr. McCaig included a minor interracial affair and one suggestion of closeted homosexuality (not Ashley Wilkes’s). More controversial, though, were sprinklings of a racial epithet within various characters’ dialogue, a point that concerned the estate’s lawyers.

“It’s an issue that we thought should be considered,” Mr. Anderson said. “It’s an explosive term from a social point of view.”

Mr. McCaig pointed out that the use of the word was historically accurate, and that it cropped up in “Gone With the Wind.” The word made it into the final manuscript.

Mr. McCaig declined to reveal much about the plot of “Rhett Butler’s People,” but he did say it opened with a duel between Rhett and Belle Watling’s brother, Shadrach, an episode that is referred to briefly in “Gone With the Wind.” He also acknowledged an important plot line concerning a child, possibly the son of Rhett and Belle. And an excerpt from a scene released by St. Martin’s shows the teenage Rhett being punished by his father and sent to work for Belle’s father as a laborer on the rice plantation where Rhett grew up.

Following up on a follow-up inevitably has its challenges. “I’m almost certain that there’s going to be people who really have a bone to pick with ‘Gone With the Wind’ who are going to take it out on this,” Mr. McCaig said. “There’s going to be adoring fans who find places where I distorted the true meaning of the original. And there’s going to be some people who think it’s a pretty good book.”

Here's my list, let me know your top three-

The Hours by Michael Cunningham
240 pages
The Hours is both an homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One gray suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs. Dalloway. In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of AIDS. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. These women's lives are linked both by the 1925 novel and by the few precious moments of possibility each keeps returning to.

As Cunningham moves between the three women, his transitions are seamless. One early chapter ends with Woolf picking up her pen and composing her first sentence, "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." The next begins with Laura rejoicing over that line and the fictional universe she is about to enter. Clarissa's day, on the other hand, is a mirror of Mrs. Dalloway's--with, however, an appropriate degree of modern beveling as Cunningham updates and elaborates his source of inspiration. Clarissa knows that her desire to give her friend the perfect party may seem trivial to many. Yet it seems better to her than shutting down in the face of disaster and despair. Like its literary inspiration, The Hours is a hymn to consciousness and the beauties and losses it perceives. It is also a reminder that, as Cunningham again and again makes us realize, art belongs to far more than just "the world of objects."

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
224 pages
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. In this Orwellian-like society, the Island Council pays homage to Nelvin Nollop, the author of the famous sentence that uses all the letters of the alphabet-"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." When letters start to fall off the memorial statue of Nelvin Nollop, the council takes it as a sign to ban those letters from speech and writing. Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council. As more letters disappear, they, too, are eliminated from daily life, as well as from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
400 pages
In 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered the wife and infant daughter of their younger brother Allen. The crimes were noteworthy not merely for their brutality but for the brothers' claim that they were acting on direct orders from God. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer tells the story of the killers and their crime but also explores the shadowy world of Mormon fundamentalism from which the two emerged. The Mormon Church was founded, in part, on the idea that true believers could speak directly with God. But while the mainstream church attempted to be more palatable to the general public by rejecting the controversial tenet of polygamy, fundamentalist splinter groups saw this as apostasy and took to the hills to live what they believed to be a righteous life. When their beliefs are challenged or their patriarchal, cult-like order defied, these still-active groups, according to Krakauer, are capable of fighting back with tremendous violence. While Krakauer's research into the history of the church is admirably extensive, the real power of the book comes from present-day information, notably jailhouse interviews with Dan Lafferty. Far from being the brooding maniac one might expect, Lafferty is chillingly coherent, still insisting that his motive was merely to obey God's command. Krakauer's accounts of the actual murders are graphic and disturbing, but such detail makes the brothers' claim of divine instruction all the more horrifying. In an age where Westerners have trouble comprehending what drives Islamic fundamentalists to kill, Jon Krakauer advises us to look within America's own borders.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
352 pages
In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry. Among the hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, the American soprano, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types. Reuben Iglesias, the diminutive and gracious vice president, quickly gets sideways of the kidnappers, who have no interest in him whatsoever. Meanwhile, a Swiss Red Cross negotiator named Joachim Messner is roped into service while vacationing. He comes and goes, wrangling over terms and demands, and the days stretch into weeks, the weeks into months.

With the omniscience of magic realism, Ann Patchett flits in and out of the hearts and psyches of hostage and terrorist alike, and in doing so reveals a profound, shared humanity. Her voice is suitably lyrical, melodic, full of warmth and compassion. Joined by no common language except music, the 58 international hostages and their captors forge unexpected bonds. Time stands still, priorities rearrange themselves. Ultimately, of course, something has to give, even in a novel so imbued with the rich imaginative potential of magic realism. But in a fractious world, Bel Canto remains a gentle reminder of the transcendence of beauty and love.


The Human Stain by Philip Roth
384 pages
Roth almost never fails to surprise. After a clunky beginning, his new novel settles into what would seem to be patented Roth territory. Coleman Silk, at 71 a distinguished professor at a small New England college, has been harried from his position because of what has been perceived as a racist slur. His life is ruined: his wife succumbs under the strain, his friends are forsaking him, and he is reduced to an affair with 34-year-old Faunia Farley, the somber and illiterate janitor at the college.

It is at this point that Zuckerman, Roth's novelist alter ego, gets to know and like Silk and to begin to see something of the personal and sexual liberation wrought in him by the unlikely affair with Faunia. It is also the point at which Faunia's estranged husband Les Farley, a Vietnam vet disabled by stress, drugs and drink, begins to take an interest in the relationship.

So far this is highly intelligent, literate entertainment, with a rising tension. Will Les do something violent? Will Delphine Roux, the young French professor Silk had hired, who has come to hate him, escalate the college's campaign against him? Yes, but she now wants to make something of his Faunia relationship too. Then, in a dazzling coup, Roth turns all expectations on their heads, and begins to show Silk in a new and astounding light, as someone who has lived a huge lie all his life, making the fuss over his alleged racism even more surreal.

The book continues to unfold layer after layer of meaning. There is a tragedy, as foretold, and an exquisitely imagined ending in which Zuckerman himself comes to feel both threatened and a threat. Roth is working here at the peak of his imaginative skills, creating many scenes at once sharply observed and moving. This is a fitting capstone to the trilogy that includes American Pastoral and I Married a Communist--a book more balanced and humane than either, and bound, because of its explosive theme, to be widely discussed.

To answer Maggee's question, I think we should determine the list order alphabetically by first name. What does everyone else think?

Leigh is doing the list next and we decided to meet last TUESDAY of the month.

NY Times tool to determine if its better to rent or buy

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAPHIC.html?ex=1179374400&en=4c6914bbe51d0a42&ei=5070

How could people be so "stupid" to sign up for mortgages they can't afford? here's how...

Ameriquest Employees Confess: Lying To Customers, Forging Papers

Yesterday's Morning Edition featured confessions from former Ameriquest mortgage employees. The confessions included startling revelations, such as:

• Amerquest showed the film Boiler Room as a training film to new hires. The film is about crooked stock brokers who sell bogus stocks to unsuspecting investors.

•Customers were told that their mortgages were fixed for "as long as they wanted" when in reality, they were only fixed for 2 years.

• Fixed rate mortgage papers were stacked on top of variable rate ones. After tricking the customer into signing all of them, the fixed rate papers were discarded.

•"Sending papers to the Art Department" was slang for covering the income numbers on w2s and writing in bigger ones, so as to qualify customers for mortgages they could not afford.

It's a great piece, everyone should head over to NPR and have a listen. —MEGHANN MARCO

Are we going alphabetically or by the contributors list?

Great discussion and food last night!

I'm not sure live music is going to be conducive to us discussing the book...but we'll try....

343 Arsenal Street. It's near BSC and Panera in the brick buildings.

I've found 2 addresses for this: 51 Main St and 343 Arsenal St - which is it?

Sorry, I'm super busy today! Yes, La Casa de Pedro sounds fine, 7:30. See you then!

I vote to go back to one of the original ideas, La Casa de Pedro. They have tapas too which aren't too pricey, plenty of parking, most likely relatively quiet, etc.

Sorry to rush, but I need to know pretty soon where I need to show up.... anyone feel like making a decision? Any of the places mentioned so far sound fine to me = ) 7.30, yes?

Ok, that makes COrnwall's not an option....
What about the Bull&Finch Pub? Cheers?

Yes, there is a game tonight at home.

Let's do Cornwalls- not that expensive, easy to get to, shouldn't be that crowded........oh wait, are the Sox at home tonight?

What's the parking situation there? Is there a game tonight?

Who's doing the list this time? Does anyone know?

and i think cornwall's would be fine.

Lots of ideas here, but no concensus. I suggest that Kathy be "benevolent dictator" and make the decision since its her book.

Kathy, yes, that sounds right - thanks! I thought someone might know the place.

Whatever everyone else wants to do is fine with me. Just give me a time and a place!

Leigh, are you thinking of Cornwalls in Kenmore Square? That might be a good choice- it's not usually that crowded.

There should be a naked fish in Waltham too off of Totten Pond Road. Easy to get to from 128.

Did we rule out La Casa de Pedro?

Legal Sea Foods has a Legal C Bar on 27 Columbus Ave which is being seen as a good jamaican restaurant........Maybe try that?

I don't know if it matters, but i could do Naked Fish too, but there isn't one in Boston anymore. The closest one(s) would be Framingham or Lynnfield right on Route 1.

But I like the Naked Fish, too!

I know there is an English pub in Boston, too. I've been to it, and they had strongbow cider on tap = ), but can't remember the name, or exactly where it was.... but it was in Boston proper, I think. I know this may not be a lot of help, but maybe someone else knows the place.....

Or we could do Naked Fish?

Is this the place in JP? This might be more "Carribean", but it might not be conducive to a bookclub.

On any given night El Oriental de Cuba may be filled with Cubans, Dominicans, Colombians, Spanish, Americans and various other ethnicities and locals. It's a neighborhood place, a place that reminds Cubans of home and reminds locals why they want to visit the Caribbean. With both a takeout and eat-in business, the chefs at El Oriental de Cuba keep busy. They're busy preparing traditional dishes like pollo guisado (stewed chicken), camaron al ajillo (garlic shrimp), sopa de pollo (chicken soup) and of course, the Cuban sandwich. Made legendary around town by upscale versions at places like Chez Henri (in Cambridge), the Cuban sandwich features pork, ham and cheese, all flattened between layers of bread in a sandwich press. Throw in some pickles and mustard (and if you must, mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato) and the result is warm, gooey and sinfully good. Most dishes come with plantains, rice and beans, all for prices between $5 and $10

From the Washington post

Report From Week 310

in which you were asked to come up with lame analogies. The line separating painfully bad analogies from weirdly good ones is as thin as a soup made from the shadow of a chicken that was starved to death by Abraham Lincoln. And so we had to create a separate category to honor those entries that came too close to actual literature to qualify as "bad." Here they are:

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

Even in his last years, grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut. (Sandra Hull, Arlington)

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of "Jeopardy!" (Jean Sorensen, Herndon)

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington)

He regarded death with hesitant dread, as if he were a commedia dell'arte troupe and death was an audience of pipe-fitters. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. (Malcolm Fleschner, Arlington)

Now, back to the gloriously bad analogies.

Sixth Runner-Up: The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. (Malcolm Fleschner, Arlington)

Fifth Runner-Up: "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night. (Bonnie Speary Devore, Gaithersburg)

Fourth Runner-Up: He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something. (John Kammer, Herndon)

Third-Runner-Up: Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. (Barbara Collier, Garrett Park)

Second Runner-Up: She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. (Susan Reese, Arlington)

First Runner-Up: It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before. (Marian Carlsson, Lexington, Va.)

And the winner of the Smorked Beef Rectum: The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton. (J.F. Knowles, Springfield)

Honorable Mentions

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM. (Paul J. Kocak, Syracuse)

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium. (Ralph Scott, Washington)

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist. (Greg Dobbins, Arlington)

He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose. (Russ Beland, Springfield)

The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object. (Nanci Phillips Sharp, Gaithersburg)

You know how in "Rocky" he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in. (Alan S. Jarvis, Fredericksburg)

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. (Susan Reese, Arlington)

She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any PH cleanser. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington)

Outside the little snow-covered cabin, a large pile of firewood was stacked like Pamela Anderson. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac)

A branch fell from the tree like a trunk falling off an elephant. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington)

The painting was very Escher-like, as if Escher had painted an exact copy of an Escher painting. (Joseph Romm, Washington)

Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often. (Jim Seibert, Falls Church)

They were as good friends as the people on "Friends." (Katie Buckner, McLean)

Her breasts were like two mounds of flesh waiting to be compared to something. Something round. Perhaps some kind of citrus fruit. (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington)

He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo. (Bob Sorensen, Herndon)

The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)

Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light. (Barbara Collier, Garrett Park)

The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

And Last: Joe was frustrated, like a man who thought his claim to fame was occasional appearances in a weekly humor contest, but in fact is known to millions as a stupid high school student who writes unintentionally humorous bad analogies. (Joseph Romm, Washington)

I vote for La Case de Pedro (Just read more about it).......It seems like a funky atmosphere too.

Sorry ladies, I am going to have to bow out of this one. Will be travelling to Philadelphia that night for work (figures the first time I have actually travelled for work in 2 years is Monday). Will miss talking about the book. Have fun, catch you on the next round!

looks like Monday, don't we usually meet at 7:30?

The only jamacian places I found

Flames II | Send to Phone Restaurant, Jamaican, Lunch Spot, $ (under $20)

2.86 miles | Map 746 Huntington Ave Boston, MA 02115

Another Possibility, Carribbean (Venezualan/Colombian) but not Jamaicain is in Watertown at the Arsenal. I can verify that it has nice atmosphere and fruity drinks.

La Casa De Pedro | Send to Phone Restaurant, Colombian, Outdoor Dining, $$ ($21 - $30)

6.44 miles | Map 51 Main St Watertown, MA 02472

For any Barbara Kingsolver fans: http://www.harvard.com/events/press_release.php?id=1857

I plan to go and thought all you literate girls might be interested too....