Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry

We are reading Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up by Dave Barry for our July book club meeting.

The meeting will be held in Meeting Room B of the Main Public Library downtown. Metered street parking is free on Sundays, and there is parking available in the garage under the library (garage closes at 5).

After the meeting we'll go out for food and further conversation.
Thanks to the generosity of our donors, SHL has funds available to ensure everyone feels welcome and able to participate. If you would like to participate in dining with us after book club but the cost presents a challenge, please email us at shl@lowcountryhumanists.org, and we can discreetly arrange to cover your costs.

About the book:
How does the son of a Presbyterian minister wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for writing a wildly inaccurate newspaper column read by millions of people?

In Class Clown, Dave Barry takes us on a hilarious ride, starting with a childhood largely spent throwing rocks for entertainment—there was no internet—and preparing for nuclear war by hiding under a classroom desk. After literally getting elected class clown in high school, he went to college, where, as an English major, he read snippets of great literature when he was not busy playing in a rock band (it was the sixties).

He began his journalism career at a small-town Pennsylvania newspaper where he learned the most important rule of local journalism: never confuse a goose with a duck. His journey then took a detour into the business world, where as a writing consultant he spent years trying, with limited success, to get corporate folks to, for God’s sake, get the point. Somehow from there he wound up as a humor columnist for The Miami Herald, where his boss was a wild man who encouraged him to write about anything that struck him as amusing and to never worry about alienating anyone.

His columns were not popular with everyone: He managed to alienate a vast army of Neil Diamond fans, and the entire state of Indiana. But he also developed a loyal following of readers who alerted him to the threat of exploding toilets, not to mention the fire hazards posed by strawberry pop-tarts and Rollerblade Barbie, which he demonstrated to the nation on the David Letterman show. He led his readers on a crusade against telemarketers that ultimately caused the national telemarketers association to stop answering its own phones because it was getting—irony alert—too many unwanted calls. He has also run for president multiple times, although so far without success.

He became a book author and joined a literary rock band, which was not good at playing music but did once perform with Bruce Springsteen, who sang backup to Dave. As for his literary merits, Dave writes: “I’ll never have the critical acclaim of, say, Marcel Proust. But was Marcel Proust ever on Carson? Did he ever steal a hotel sign for Oprah?”

Class Clown isn’t just a memoir; it’s a vibrant celebration of a life rich with humor, absurdity, joy, and sadness. Dave says the most important wisdom imparted by his Midwestern parents was never to take anything too seriously. This laughter-filled book is proof that he learned that lesson well.

We are having an emergency book club meeting on Saturday, August 9th to discuss Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

How is a book club meeting an emergency? A trailer was just released for the film based on the book, and the trailer spoils key plot points of the book. DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER UNTIL YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK. This is an exceptionally good book that is difficult to talk about without spoiling. The movie looks amazing. It isn't coming out until March, but it is a big studio film starring Ryan Gosling that will likely get a lot of promotion, so it is important to read the book ASAP. It is best to read the book without knowing too much about it. The book is science fiction. It is by the author of the excellent book The Martian which was also made into a very good film.

If it is such an emergency, why are we waiting till August? Well, people need time to read the book! It is a real page turner. Many people won't need that much time, but we want everyone to have a chance. You’ve got 39 days from this event announcement.

The SHL movie club will be going to see the film when it comes out in March, so keep an eye out for that event.

This very special meeting of the book club will take place at 3 pm on Saturday, August 9th in the community room of the Otranto Library in North Charleston. Why Otranto? We are trying out different spaces, and they have free parking which is not as easy downtown on a Saturday.

Per our usual, we will go out for food & drinks after the meeting. Location TBD. Somewhere close to the library. If you've got any good suggestions, put them in the comments below.

Thanks to the generosity of our donors, SHL has funds available to ensure everyone feels welcome and able to participate. If you would like to participate in dining with us after book club but the cost presents a challenge, please email us at shl@lowcountryhumanists.org, and we can discreetly arrange to cover your costs.

About the book:
This is a non-spoiler description from the publisher.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.