December 2022: Holiday Party and Sixth Cycle

The DCBC met on Sunday, December 18, 2022 for our holiday party and to select books for Cycle 6! Can you believe we are on Cycle 6 already?? Wow. The list of books for Cycle 6 is at the end of this post and can also be found on our Book List page.

A huge THANK YOU up at the top to Miriam who hosted and put together an amazing spread!!

In attendance were Sarah, Ashley, Paige, Emily O., and Lauren. Jessy was off on her fabulous travels, but contributed to the book swap and was with us in spirit!

We had a blast doing our book swap and chatting about all things books!

Books all wrapped up--mysterious and enticing!

Everyone's a winner with this game!

We also put together our book list for 2023. Everyone who attended the requisite number of meetings got their pick, plus a couple other books nominated and voted on by the group to fill out the year. (See The Rules! page for an explanation.)

 Here are the books for CYCLE 6!

January 2023:

Mrs Death Misses Death, by Salena Godden, voted on by Committee.

February 2023:

The Dead Romantics, by Ashley Poston, selected by Kris.

March 2023:

The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich, selected by Emily Y.

April 2023:

The Monsters We Defy, by Leslye Penelope, selected by Sarah.

May 2023: 

The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood, voted on by Committee.

June 2023:

The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins, selected by Lauren.

July 2023:

No book or meeting, but possible bonus book club activity to be determined!

August 2023: 

Silver Under Nightfall, by Rin Chupeco, selected by Ashley.

September 2023: 

Stone Blind, by Natalie Haynes, selected by Miriam.

October 2023: 

The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones, selected by Paige.

November 2023:

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist, by Jennifer Wright, selected by Jessy.

December 2023:

No book. Holiday party and choose books for the next cycle!

Meeting Report: November 2022

The DCBC met on Sunday, December 4, 2022 to discuss November's book: The Princess Beard, by Delilah Dawson and Kevin Hearne (selected by Emily Y.)

Attendees were: Emily Y., Jessy, Kristyn, Miriam, and Sarah. 

The Princess Beard is the third installment in The Tales of Pell series. It opens with Morgan, a princess who has just awoken from a long slumber in a tower to find her hair and fingernails have grown excessively long. She breaks off her long fingernails and cuts off her braids, using them to escape, but keeps the beard she has grown as a disguise. Morgan goes on to find a pirate crew to serve with, aboard a ship called The Puffy Peach, under the one-eyed parrot pirate captain Filthy Lucre. 

Morgan is hardly the main character of this book, however. The Princess Beard is more of an ensemble cast of misfit characters. Vic (short for Pissing Victorious), is a swole dude-bro of a centaur who is ashamed of his magical gift--the ability to conjure tea and cupcakes. Tempest is a flesh-eating dryad who has ambitions of becoming a lawyer to see that justice is served. Alobartalus is an elf who is on a quest to meet his hero (never meet your heroes).

The crew discover that what they thought they wanted is not actually what they want, come to accept themselves, foil a dastardly plot, save the day, and realize they have found a family of sorts among one another. 

Ultimately this is not a bad message, so we gave it points for that. Vic and Tempest were also our favorite characters, as well as the things that they satirized, i.e. misogyny and law school / Hogwarts, respectively. (The law school Tempest briefly attends is a very silly place called BogTorts.) We thought Vic's superpower would actually be pretty cool to have, which Vic himself comes to realize by the end once he sheds his toxic masculinity stemming from his Daddy Issues^TM.

The Princess Beard makes a lot of cultural references, knowledge of which are probably helpful in understanding the jokes it makes, and this book is 69% jokes*. There were also several instances of potty humor (anterior bodily function and anatomy humor). Overall, the humor in The Princess Beard was not to most of the group's taste, but serious fans of South Park and Rick and Morty might have a good time with this.

The Verdict:

Taken from the average DCBC member ratings on Goodreads who had marked the book as read and rated at the time of this writing:

The Princess Beard: 2.75 stars

Thank you to Emily Y. for hosting!

*See what I did there?

Next Month: January 2023: Mrs Death Misses Death, by Salena Godden (selected by committee--this is something new we're trying; see The Rules! for an explanation).

As always, the full book list for this cycle can be found here.

P.S.: My sincerest apologies for the tardiness of this post! There will be a recap of our December 2022 holiday party plus the books for the next cycle shortly!