I know a lot of you do, did, or are considering joining a book club. Got any good stories to tell us?
A few years ago I joined one briefly. It met in a large, accommodating coffee shop and I couldn’t hear half of what was said. So, pulled the plug on that.
Now I belong to one that a friend very kindly invited me into. They’re a very nice crowd, accomplished, talkative. It seems mean to say they’re boring, but I fear this is the truth. Well, no, wait. They’re not all boring, or at least they’re not all boring all the time. I can be funny, when on my game. My friend is funny, or can be when not held back by the general atmosphere of… well, let’s take a peek inside and see what the various book-club members are like.
We have the married couple who seem determined to turn the event into a thinly-disguised marital fight for control. They’ll go around and around about a particular point and won’t stop until one or the other concedes. So tedious.
(Doncha find that with this kind of event, you always have to watch out for married couples, mother-daughter acts, and father-son acts? BFF acts can be trying, too.)
And then we have the guy who can’t help turning the event into some sort of university tutorial (we go from house to house, the host is the MC, so it’s extra-bad when he is the host).
Then there’s the one who is YET AGAIN reminding us of her glory days as a nightclub singer and maybe if we’re lucky favour she’ll us with a few bars. She also likes to allude to dark secrets in her past, but not tell anyone what they are (her kid was in jail for con-artistry; every knows).
She also likes to call herself a writer until I snapped one night and let her know, obliquely, in convo with someone else, that’s it’s bad form to call yourself a writer until you’ve actually had something accepted somewhere. Bad form on my own part to do this, I know, but I think if you’d been there you would’ve snapped too.
Then there’s Mr. Drone. A lovely man, in casual conversations before things start. He’s charming and listens well and has been everywhere in the world. But once the book discussion starts he takes himself very seriously and takes FOREVER to get to his point. One evening someone (not me) got a wooden spoon and declared it the Talking Stick. It was wonderful. Once Mr. Drone had got to his point, but hadn’t stopped droning on yet, you got to grab the stick and wave it in the air and have half a chance of getting your own point in before you gave up and had another glass of wine. I highly recommend official Talking Sticks for book clubs. Tie some shells or small rattle-y things on it that make a noise when it’s shaken. Trust me on this one.
Most evenings take place in small homes that can just barely fit the 8 or 10 of us around the table. We’re many of us sitting on seldom-used chairs hauled down from the attic. Mostly folding chairs. Folding chairs were invented by the Spanish Inquisition and no one ever expects them to be so uncomfortable. Goddamn, they make my back hurt, and my ass fidgets around all night trying to find a comfy position. Some of the brightest activity of the evening is right before we sit down, people are trying to eyeball the best chairs and get into them quick without seeming obvious.
Gotta say, the food is almost always excellent, without anyone ever getting into any top-this! nonsense. One woman did actual Turkish (she’s a professional tour guide, Turkey is her specialty) cooking when the book was “The Fourth Crusade”, by Jonathan Phillips. When I hosted “Wolves Eat Dogs”, by Martin Cruz Smith, even cooking-hating me went to a grocery store and bought Russian-peasant-type food, rye bread, sausage, dill pickles, and a bottle of Stoli.
The wine flows freely, but no one ever get so drunk as to be a nuisance and need help home.
But I’m seriously considering quitting this group. Some of the books coming up are dire. Something terribly sad about a ship-wrecked sailor for whom things go from bad to worse to absolutely awful. Something terribly sad about a small-town, Depression-era baseball team. Or maybe it’s football. I detest sports, so for me it doesn’t matter, I no kurr. Also coming up is “A Suitable Boy”, by Vikram Seth. A fine writer and a fine novel, but come on, it’s 1,368 in the trade paperback edition.
Everyone gets to choose one book per year, and I think they are too prone to choosing something they themselves love, without considering that maybe it’s a little too, um, specialised, lacking in general appeal. There’s a reason there’s a semi-official category of mid-list books that crop up frequently at book-club meetings, and come with suggested topics of discussion. Broad-appeal books mean there’s a greater chance of everyone present having at least a little something to say about it, instead of sitting there silently seething with “I haaaated this stupid thing” swarming around in their head.
So, for now, I give up. I’ll sit home and quietly read my own books chosen by my own self.
How about you? Have you tried book clubs? Did they work for you? Have you thought of starting one? Maybe one that was subject-specific, say, all-science, or all-history?
