The caffeine descends.

Good news! As you may have already heard, Melville House has teamed up with Brooklyn Roasting Company to get totally ripped on coffee and books in a safe space among friends on a regular basis.

Yep, that’s right, we’ve started a book club, and our neighbors at Brooklyn Roasting Company have agreed to help out, providing us with a warm café and highly-caffeinated beverages.

If this sounds like your scene, reader, well, you are absolutely right: this is your scene. It totally is. I was at the last meeting, and I remember thinking: Chad, this is your scene. I was talking to myself at the time, but, now, I am talking to you. I say it with confidence now, over and over.

Let me paint you a picture of our last meeting: several mortals—in a fever, in jubilation, in collective caffeination—gathered to discuss Kate Chopin’s seminal, sensual proto-feminist classic The Awakening. In addition to the coffee, black as night, we ate brownies and blondies and lemon cake (it was co-host Rebecca’s birthday week, after all). A candle was blown out (again, birthday), and the following items were discussed (rather eloquently, I might add):

• Parenting (is it bad?)
• Excellent narrative pacing
• A bird with a broken wing that flops around in the air for a bit and then falls into the ocean
• The ocean
• Subtlety
• A lack of subtlety
• The ocean again!
• Cigars, cigarettes, the differences between the two
• Fuckboys

A birthday is celebrated.

But that, I should say, is a mere summary of the goodness that came from within us and without us that night, October 15th, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Now, the point to be made: It’s happening again — and soon! On November 19th, the group meets again, this time to discuss The Dialogue of the Dogs, Miguel de Cervantes’s weird and wild tale of a syphilis-laden man who, outside his hospital, overhears two mutts sharing their life stories.

So, will you be there when the good in us comes out? Yes, you will. Is that a weird thing to ask? Yes, it is. Please RSVP on Facebook.