The day finally arrived... Melbourne Writers Festival edition of the First Tuesday Book Club... YAY! This special event was hosted at the ABC's Elsternwick studio with Jennifer Byrne and her usual side-kicks, Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger, as well as special guests, American novelist David Vann, and science writer Margaret Wertheim. An enthusiastic and sometimes divided debate ensued about the themes and literary merit of Laurent Binet's HHhH - a historical novel focussing on the 1942 assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. A more measured discussion followed when the team's attention shifted to George Eliot's Middlemarch - a narrative about the ordinary folk of fictitious English midland township of Middlemarch during the early 1800's. This celebrated novel explores themes ranging from politics and religion, to the status of women, marriage, education and hypocrisy... "every sentence rich and beautiful". A worthwhile exchange of my time - sometimes you just have to do something special for yourself!