Book Club

June 2025: Inverse Cowgirl: A Memoir by Alicia Roth Weigel

About the book:

Two percent of the world’s population—the same percentage of humans who have naturally red hair—is born intersex. Yet many people aren’t even familiar with the word.

Intersex individuals are born with both male and female reproductive organs, yet many are stripped of their identity at birth when a parent designates M or F on a birth certificate. That subjective choice is often followed by invasive, life-changing surgeries, performed without the individual’s consent. Intersex people have become a target of politicians, attacked for who they are and threatened by legislation that attempts to categorize and define them.

Alicia Weigel is fighting back against the hate and fearmongering to protect the rights and lives of everyone. In this book, she boldly speaks out about working as a change agent in a state that actively attempts to pass legislation that would erase her existence, explores how we can reclaim bodily autonomy, and encourages us to amplify our voices to be heard.

Disarming, funny, charming, and powerful, this is a vital account of personal accomplishment that will open eyes and change minds.

July 2025:Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up by Dave Barry

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.