How to do Book Club in London:

 

1.  Download "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls on your Nook (thanks children for the Christmas   gift!)

 

2.  Read the book.

 

3.  On the appointed day, hop on the tube, then the overground, then hope you walk

the right direction, find the correct street, and walk down to a little bookshop

called "Books for Cooks".

 

4.  Go to the back of the bookshop to the little restaurant, hear a few strangers talking and ask if they're here for the Book Club.

 

5.  Sit down with them, and finally a familiar face comes.

 

6.  Discuss this amazing, difficult, heart-wrenching, yet uplifting book with

five other women from the U.S. and one from the U.K.

 

7.  Eat lunch...This little bookstore serves food from the cookbooks they sell.  Whatever they make that day, you eat....no ordering except do you want 2 or 3 courses?  Can I say lentil/pomegranate soup is absolutely divine?  And chicken with plums and onions and who knows what else on rice is very tasty.  And the chocolate cake....to die for. They serve until the food is gone. If you got there too late....sorry!

 

8.  Pay up front at the till as you leave...5 lbs for 2 courses, 7 lbs for 3.

 

9.  Get introduced to the bookstore kitty-cornered from this one....it was made famous in the movie Notting Hill with Hugh Grant.

 

10.  Go into the Pound Store (that would be the Dollar Store in the U.S.) and buy a few little items.

 

11.  Walk down Portabello Road (famous in Bednobs and Broomsticks??)  and head back to the station with your new friends. 

 

12.  Everyone scatters and heads different directions  to go home because we live all over London.

 

13.  Download the next book and hope the next restaurant will be just as delightful.

 

The End.