Books and Brew Club

Hosted by Meghan at The Brass Tap

All The Games Gods Play Book club meeting

Books and Brew Club

Hosted by Meghan at The Brass Tap

A few reviews from members of the book club! Overall this book received a 4.2/5 stars from our club!

For the goodie bags, I made each bag feature a different god. Distinguishing which god each bag featured, I placed a bookmark sticking out with the name of the Greek god/goddess. Inside the bags I placed stickers associated with that god/goddess and other mythological gods/creatures. I also placed inside chocolates because Hades was described as being scented of bitter chocolate by Lyra. I also placed inside stickers of popular quotes from the book as well as metal feather shaped bookmarks. Inside the bags I placed folded pieces of paper. I had each member of the club fill out the paper with predictions for book 2 as we waited for all the other members to arrive. I placed all the predictions in a sealed envelope to be opened in October’s meeting. We have already decided to pick All the Games Gods Break as our book for that month! I recommend you do this for any other books your club reads that have a sequel coming out in the future. As previously shown, I also placed inside each bag a book review paper that was filled out alongside the predictions.

I bought a chalkboard to write quotes or other book themed phrases. For this meeting I wrote two quotes from the book. On the back I wrote the quote “Seems to me that love can calm storms, end wars, make fools of smart people, and bridge the gap between life and death. Doesn’t that make it the most powerful?” I also bought a few Greek themed items to use as part of the display.

I make stickers with the cover of the book for members to take home and I also designed a sticker for our club that I put out for any new members. I like to spread out the DQ sheets and put the menus in stands. I also spread out more chocolates because who doesn’t like chocolate (well aside from me).

Depending on the god/goddess the members of the club picked, they were separated into groups based on the four virtues featured in the book. I made a cheat sheet that helps the members figure out which virtue their god/goddess belongs to and then I made displays as shown in the previous photo (heart) to help members find their groups. I let Hades and Hestia (who was not in the book but I made a goodie bag for her regardless) pick their own virtues to join. These groups would work together to compete in the Labors I created. The winning group received prizes which was mostly more chocolates and gold leaf crowns!

The Labors

Below are a images of the Labors I created! The first group to complete all three correctly won the Labors. Most groups completed the crossword and the connections the fastest while struggling with the match the relic puzzle. Other options for Labors could be a wordsearch, a fill in the blank, or riddles.

The Games Gods Play puzzlesDownload

The Games Gods Play

I laminated this puzzle and provided a dry erase marker so the members of the group could write directly on this puzzle. This was the most difficult of the puzzle.
This was one of the easiest puzzles for the group, even though I did not provide a word bank, I had drink menus in front of the group that contained all the names of the gods as you can see below.
MinotaurElysiumCharonChance
ChimeraFelixErebosAchilles
SisyphusHydraBooneStyx
KrakenLyraTartarusAsclepius
If you have ever played the NY times connections, this puzzle is an ode to that. Players are to separate all 16 boxes into 4 groups of 4 based on a connection. For this specific puzzle the connections are as follows: places in the Underworld, members of the Order of Thieves, mythological creatures, and important people in mythology. I laminated the squares and used Velcro tape to make the puzzle more hands on. If you do this make sure you stay consistent with the side of the Velcro you use.
I used document envelopes to organize all the Labors for each group. I printed all the Labors on a vintage style paper to give them more of a Greek aesthetic. Inside the envelopes I also placed a dry erase marker, a pencil I spray painted gold and an eraser.

Every meeting I create a menu with drinks themed according to the book. Sometimes I bring in an extra ingredient to be added to certain drinks like honey or perhaps pomegranate would have been useful for this meeting. This encourages the members to order drinks, narrows done with tremendous number of options our bar offers and sets the mood for the book. If you run a book club out of your home perhaps one or two drink options that you can prebatch would be better suited. I would suggest pomegranate moscow mules or possibly a pomegranate margarita would be easy to batch!

The Games Gods Play DQsDownload

Every meeting I also create a list of questions to help guide the discussion. The specific members who come to my meetings are more outgoing and don’t mind contributing to the discussions so we tend to stray off the questions and just talk. Which is absolutely the point of the meeting so don’t be frustrated by this! I simply create questions to help guide any lulls in the discussion or to ensure we hit specific points. If you have more introverted people who don’t like to speak up over others, I would suggest having the members take turns reading the questions in order to give them a chance to speak.

Our 3D printing gurus struck again!!

Thank you M & L for your fantastic contribution to this book club meeting with more wonderful 3D printed creations. This time they created a lock box that contained pendants with the name and symbol of each god/goddess and 3 coins with portraits of their heads which were fantastic!! They printed a 26 sided dice with the symbols of all the gods and the symbol of Mount Olympus that acted as a dealer’s choice option. They also made regular 6 sided dice with the words hit and miss on them. The dealer rolls the 26 sided dice twice to decide who plays against eachother and the players rolls the hit/miss dice. If one player rolls hit and the other rolls a miss the player who rolls a miss must give one of their coins to the player who rolled a hit. You repeat this process until one person remains with all the coins. To speed up this process at the meeting we had multiple duels happening at one in the form of rock paper scissor. The winner was gifted a 3D printed gold leaf crown and a trophy.