A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues decided to form a bookclub. Always eager for an excuse to read, I signed up. Our first meeting, which was today, was to discuss our first book, which was one I’d suggested: Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen. I’d already read it.

I enjoyed it: in a lot of ways, it reminded me of HBO’s Carnivale. It’s essentially a story of a kid who winds up in a circus during the Great Depression, and his trials as he becomes caretaker to Rosie, a supposedly dumb-as-bricks elephant, and falls in love with Marlena, a performer married to a violent psychopath.

The overwhelming opinion of the rest of the bookclub was that it was, eh, a nice story, but hardly a spectacular work of literary genius. Either they’re all snobs, or I’ll just read anything. Maybe it’s a little of both, certainly, I’ve always considered myself a book snob. Still, it’s always nice — well, maybe not so nice, in this case — to hear other peoples’ opinions.

Even if they’re all wrong. (Okay, maybe I’m a little bitter…)

Next up: Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood.

The President of Tribune Interactive sure didn’t like his stint at eBay, via his company bio:

Chase joins Tribune after leaving his post as vocabulary advisorist for George W. Bush, President of the United States of America. President Bush recruited Chase from eBay where he worked as president of buying crap. In this role, Chase increased the percentage of crap available on eBay by 300%. He honed his crap-procurement techniques during his tenure at Google, where he worked as vice president of finding crap anywhere. Previous stints include jobs at Microsoft (he worked side-by-side with Bill Gates to develop stuff) and at the major television networks (he watched a lot of TV and ate a lot of crap). Chase refers to his network days as the “genesis of my crap craft.”

I hope this wasn’t a “I’ll slap this up for the time being and take it down before anyone notices” kind of thing, because, too late!

She was also a spy!