Here’s something not many people can say: “I am in a book club that has been going on for twenty-five years.”

Last night, February 8th, 2025, the Austin Athenaeum enjoyed its twenty-fifth-anniversary meeting.

And I do mean enjoyed.

Gathered as we were at Matt T’s beautiful house with the incredible sunset view and excellent food and drink, each felt increasingly the boon of privilege that was ours to be present at that table.

We began with 45 minutes of toasts—to Athenaeum, to each other, to literature, to the solemn joy and honor to be counted among such an august body doing with such pleasure what so few do, a practice largely lost and forgotten by the modern world.

45 minutes, I say, donated ungrudgingly. Many were inspired in the moment to wax rhapsodic upon the glad night, the comradeship, and the sense that we held before us a holy grail, sharing its wealth as a sacred fellowship.

I mentioned drink, as it should not go without comment, that our host provided a bottle of excellently smooth 1835 Bourbon whiskey, as well as a bottle of Early Time Bottled in Bond, which seemed fitting for our subject of the night. Other spirits joined these fellows along with charcuterie, cornichons, olives of every variety, and—goddammit—corn nuts. But the pizza and pepperoni rolls were a toothsome anchor to the generous repast.

The features so far are enough to render any sane reader envious. But we had other meat that the common ruck know not of. The book of the night was a literary and spiritual feast, William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. I will leave it to another to post a summary contracted enough to fit into the confines of this humble medium. Suffice it to say that 17 minds of seasoned literary taste and discretion found near unanimous rapture in the volume’s pages.

And now, gentle reader, I must conclude this entry, for the wizened and fusty pages of other volumes beckon your narrator hence.