A surprisingly Latin American-themed evening

At tonight’s book club, we discussed In the Name of Salomé, by Julia Alvarez, a novel about a poet cherished in the Dominican Republic, and her daughter. Only three of us had finished the book, so (as usual) we mostly talked about other things. Our host, Aimee, had just returned from two weeks way up in the Amazon tributary system, at Agua Boa, 200 miles northwest of Manaus, in Brazil. This is a place where her husband often works. They caught a lot of piranhas while fishing, swam while keeping an eye out for the local caymans and anacondas, and did a lot of reading. Aimee and Aryana also got into a lengthy discussion on the local politics of pollinator protection, then T. and K. discussed their eventual plans to take their sons to Costa Rica to see insects and monkeys.