Vlog #29: Sogopro Book Club

Another installment of SoGoPro's Book Club! Keep on reading, folks!

[Hilarie and Nick are sitting on a couch, with the beloved purple stuffed animal unicorn behind them]

Hilarie Burton: Hi you guys! It is time for another installment of SoGoPro’s Book Club. We found a really good one.

Nicholas Gray: We seem to read a lot of books…

HB: Yeah, not really. We only read like a chapter of each book and fake it… That’s not true! We’re nerds! We love books. So anyway, yesterday we all had a big lunch. It was Billy and Kelly and Nick and myself, and we went over all our notes for the week, the last couple weeks, and then afterwards, Nick and I retreated to my favorite book store…

NG: … our favorite book store…

HB: …The Two Sister’s Bookery.

NG: [starts singing] Sisters, sisters!

HB: [joins in, with dancing] Sisters, sisters! [both stop singing] And there’s a new book out that we saw that definitely caught our eye. It’s just beautiful to begin with. But tell them the title, Nick!

NG: It’s called “Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities.”

HB: The weed that killed Lincoln’s mother…

NG: Which I wasn’t able to find in there, which one that was.

HB: Really? Maybe we actually need to read the full book. We only got it yesterday. But…

NG: But we advocated…

HB: You know, we saw Lincoln, we got excited, because of “Pedestrian.” For our new viewers, Lincoln is the name of our lead character in “Pedestrian.” We have a lot of really loyal fans, but for the newbies, Lincoln’s our number one. So, Nick picked out a deadly plant for us to explore today, something we want you guys to be careful of, because it is native to Europe, Asia, North Africa, North America… It’s called Deadly Nightshade, Atropa belladonna is it’s name. [reading from book] “Professor and plant researcher, Henry G. Walters, speculated in 1915 about the potential for cross-breeding carnivorous and poisonous plants. He believed that if a poisonous plant had a semi-muscular system possessed by the carnivorous plants, it would be more dangerous than Cholera. Doctor Walters declared the plants were capable of love, and they had memories, implying that they might also hold a grudge as lovers do. The Deadly Nightshade, he believed, was filled with hatred. Although the entire plant is poisonous, just rubbing up against it can create pustules on the skin, the blackberries are the plant’s most tempting feature. A Virginia farmer…” [says to Nick] That’s where I’m from. [continues to read] “… names Charles Wilson lost his children to these berries in 1880. The youngsters’ terse obituary suggest an agonizing weekend. ‘The first and the youngest died last Thursday, the second on Sunday night, and the third and only remaining child on Monday.’” [finishes reading] There’s a couple of other fun facts in here.

NG: Yeah, this book is just full of fun facts. [Hilarie agrees] Those are basically the best kind of books.

HB: Yeah.

NG: There’s this little anecdote about this old woman who…

HB: She’d come in crazy every fall!

NG: … she was crazy every autumn, and then her daughter brought her these berries that she was snacking on every night. But here’s a really cool little bit. It says, [reading from book] “Medical students memorized this simple mn…” [Nick struggles to pronounce the word]

HB: [whispering to Nick] Mnemonic.

NG: [continues to read] “…mnemonic trick…” [Hilarie laughs at Nick] Shoot! “…to help them recognize the signs of poison. ‘Hot as a hare, blind as a bat; Dry as a bone, red as a beet; and mad as a hatter.’”

HB: Now you can tell if you’ve been eating Deadly Nightshade, folks. So, please beware out there! We will continue to do our homework. And yeah, be safe everyone, we worry about you! Bye!

NG: Mnemonic.

HB: [laughs] Mnemonic.