Literacy Promotion in a Box

Walk or ride along a bike path sometime soon and you may spot one. Stop and open the door. A charming mini literary world awaits you thanks to the Little Free Library movement.

The idea is simple yet profound. Each Little Free Library is a small box, reminiscent of a bird house, just big enough to hold 20 books or so of varying topics, from nonfiction to novels, biographies or picture books. No library card needed. Simply pay it forward: take a book, donate a book, or exchange a book.

Local Author. Local Dinner.

The Hungry Intellectuals Book and Supper Club invite you to dinner and a book reading from local author, Cris Cohen from his new book titled Staying Crazy to Keep From Going Insane. Ticket sales for the dinner benefit Durham Central Park.

Cris Cohen of Cary, NC, is the humor columnist for the CaryCitizen.com and a prolific humor blogger.

“I am very flattered that the Hungry Intellectuals chose my book for this year’s event,” said Cohen. “It is possible that this decision was the result of a computer error or that most members voted while intoxicated. Although, to be fair, I think that is how most bills make it through Congress.”

Dinner Theme: NC Local and Seasonal Cuisine

Additional Details & To Buy Tickets

Crazy for Durham Central Park!

The Hungry Intellectuals Selects Cris Cohen’s Book for 2011
Meals from the Market Dinner Theme


The Hungry Intellectuals book and supper club will host it's second “Meals From The Market” dinner this year to help raise funds for Durham Central Park. And the members have voted Cris Cohen’s upcoming humor book, "Staying Crazy To Keep From Going Insane," as the theme for their 2011 event.

Meals From The Market dinners are annual fundraisers that individuals and groups host in their homes. Ticket sales to the dinners support Durham Central Park’s preservation and cultural activities. Last year’s Hungry Intellectuals fundraising dinner helped buy new benches for the park.

To make the annual event more engaging for dinner guests, The Hungry Intellectuals select a book around which they create a theme for the dinner.

"The Hungry Intellectuals Book and Supper Club is very excited to use Cris' book for our Meals From The Market 2011 dinner theme,” said club organizer Heather Curtis. “We are all too familiar with the idea of ‘staying crazy to keep from going insane!’"

Cris Cohen of Cary, NC, is the humor columnist for the CaryCitizen.com and a prolific humor blogger. He is publishing his new book this year as a means to raise funds for a local baseball league for kids with special needs, including his own son. The book will be a compilation of humor columns he wrote
for several newspapers when he lived in California before moving to Cary in 2008 and new ones he’s written since then. Proceeds from sales will be donated to the baseball league.

"Staying Crazy To Keep From Going Insane" has already been endorsed by Pulitzer Prize-winning humor author Dave Barry, New Yorker magazine cartoonist Drew Dernavich, and PEN/Faulker Prize-winning author T.C. Boyle.

“I am very flattered that they chose my book for this year's event,” said Cohen. “It is possible that this decision was the result of a computer error or that most members voted while intoxicated. Although, to be fair, I think that is how most bills make it through Congress.”

The Hungry Intellectuals’ 2011 Meals from the Market dinner is scheduled for Sunday, September 18. The group hasn’t determined the exact location yet.

Durham Central Park is a downtown destination that offers a venue for cultural activities. It is also part of a 24-hour, walkable neighborhood for arts, recreation, and locally owned businesses. The Park includes The Great Lawn, The Pavilion (home of the Durham Farmers Market) and The Skate Park. For more information, visit www.durhamcentralpark.org.

For more information on The Hungry Intellectuals, visit
http://www.meetup.com/The-Hungry-Intellectuals/.

For more information on Cris Cohen and Staying Crazy To Keep
From Going Insane, visit www.stayingcrazy.com.

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

"Nothing exists now but the tiger, filling his field of vision like a bad accident, like the end of the world; a pair of blazing yellow lanterns over a temple door framed with ivory columns."

-excerpt from The Tiger by John Vaillant

Originally there was some hesitation for reading Vaillant's book The Tiger, for fear that the book would be too gory for members to stomach and discuss at the dinner table. Vaillant however, does a fantastic job of describing horrid events in elegant detail, allowing the reader to experience beautiful power and grandeur rather than blood and guts.

The accompanying potluck dinner to our book discussion was a feast fit for a king. And staying true to our club's beliefs, most of the ingredients were locally sourced!

Dinner Menu: Russian cuisine -or- Tiger themed food

Beef Stroganoff
Russian Eggplant Caviar
Cheese and Potato Pierogies with saute onions
White Russian cocktails
"Snow covered" nuts
"USSR issued" soda
Tiger Cake (black and orange striped cake)
Russian chocolates

A Walk in the Cary Woods

Inspired by Bill, fellow Hungry Intellectual member Nathan and I decided to hike to Sunday's bookclub meeting & BBQ held at a picnic shelter in Umstead Park.

According to Google walking maps, our journey would take us 2 miles through suburban Cary along Harrison Avenue, and 5.5 miles along a couple of well-maintained trails of Umstead Park. The hike, according to Google, was anticipated to take no longer than 2 and 1/2 hours.

Much like most novice hikers mentioned in A Walk in the Woods, Nathan and I were in for more of a workout than we expected.

Nathan was definitely Bill in this scenario and I was Katz, mumbling and cursing as I tried to keep up with Nathan's brisk pace. Fortunately, I chose not to toss any of our BBQ supplies out of my pack along the trail. I did however, manage to convince Nathan to switch packs with me as mine was significantly heavier with most of the food, books, notes, water, and charcoal for the grill (that we didn't use anyway).

Instead of printing the Google map and bringing it along with us, we chose instead to rely on the park's maps and trail markers. This was poor planning on our part, considering both Nathan and I are the most easily disoriented people we know.

So 4 hours and 2 extra miles later, we arrived in true 3S hiker style: Sweaty, stinky, and starving!

Thankfully enough, though we were very much late for the meeting, everyone was waiting at the picnic shelter with an amazing spread of food for our Appalachian BBQ:

• Strawberries and blueberries from the farmer's market
• NC pulled pork & 'slaw
• Pasta salad
• Tossed salad from a member's home garden & homemade croutons
• Sweet potato chips
• Peach, tomato, & cucumber soup
  
• Strawberry cobbler

And most appropriately.... Snickers bars!

"I'd bang Ben Franklin!"

The Hungry Intellectuals have a reputation for saying some hilarious, and often off-the-wall comments, but this month's one liner will go down in the record book!

The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace has nothing to do with Ben Franklin but follows another "sexy" Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson. The book chronicles Jefferson's 1787 tour and escapades through Europe collecting some of the world's finest wine and follows a story line of the art (and deception) of the modern day comically extravagant high-dollar wine collecting business.

The question remains though: Why does an otherwise worthless object (i.e. an acrid and dusty old wine bottle) increase in ridiculous value simply because a celebrity is believed to have owned it?