There are numerous reasons to join a book club, but reading books is not one. At least not in my experience. Book Club is just a suburban euphemism for drunk women shooting the shit.
When my kids were little, they stole all my sanity, so I needed a way to claim some of it back. One evening, a friend brought me to her book club. It was a bit bizarre, but there was hardly any book discussion. Since I hadn’t read the book, I could join in the conversation and enjoy the evening.
Fifteen years later, my book club is still going strong. We still pick books, meet monthly and call our group chat “Book Club Beauties.” However, if we had bylaws finishing and discussing books would barely be an addendum.
I may be an anomaly in these sensory-overloaded times. Despite all the zillion distractions from social media, phone apps to Netflicks, reading is still my passion. However, I am often hard-pressed to find someone to discuss a good book. Most conversations these days are about streaming binges, not good reads.
Book clubs are very popular. Every celebrity has a book club. I have never figured out how to join Oprah’s book club. It must be on the honor system. I am sure there are plenty of people actually reading and discussing great novels. There are well-documented benefits to joining a book club, but my book club experience contains none.
We Do Not Encourage Or Promote Reading
I am pretty sure there’s a woman in my Bookclub who has never read a book. I’ll rephrase it to say she hasn’t read a book club book. It’s considered a win if two, maybe three of us have read the book. At some meetings, we can’t talk about the ending of a book because not everyone has finished it, and we can’t spoil the ending. If it’s a really good book and they are close, they will spend most of the evening in a corner trying to finish it. As I drink my wine, I can’t relax as I feel the clock ticking and the anxiety rising for my slow-reading friends. The only time everyone finishes a book is when a movie is involved. I’ll let that simmer.
We never read books outside of our comfort zone.
Yea, maybe if our comfort zone is well-written literature. There is no denying we are all somewhat successful, intelligent women. Our children have made it out of high school, and none are in prison.
But taste and brains do not go hand in hand. My college roommate read those books with medieval characters and barely dressed women on the cover. She hid them behind her bed and would not too subtly throw them behind her when anyone walked into the dorm room. If the women in my book club were honest, I bet that would be their chosen genre. Look at the success of those One Million Shades of Grey.
You will not live longer.
A study from the University of Queensland says if you belong to a social group such as a book club, you may have a longer life. Well, I disagree. The amount of alcohol, cheese, and deliciously baked goods we are packing in takes years off our lives, not adds them.
When the kids were small, the husbands had to take out the kids for the evening and get them so tired that they would pass out in the car before arriving home. Give these women a few drinks and charcuterie; the volume goes way up, and the profanities fly out. Another reason our families leave the house is that if they stayed, they would have PTSD from the sound of eight women shrieking simultaneously. Although exposing our children to good books is a sign of good parenting, exposing them to book club is just one phone call away from a child services visit.
Hosting book club with a traveling husband and little kids is challenging. It requires much running upstairs with snacks and upping the movie volume playing on the now obsolete VCR.
Rules Be Damned
Albeit half-assed, we do have rules. Certain things could get you immediately kicked out. One heinous crime involves a husband that lingers around too much. Ok, Frank, grab a plate of food, a drink, and skedaddle.
The biggest horror is if you allow your kid to remain in the room. One scene from a Stephen King novel involved a new reader scampering on Mommy’s lap and starting to read his primer aloud. Bad enough that my same-age child could barely recite the alphabet that I had to sit through someone else’s kid showing off. One personal rule I stick to is I will never be around other people’s kids if I leave mine at home. Non-negotiable.
For a laugh, I pulled up some official rules of book clubs. I could have been reading a Russian manual on surviving Siberian winters as much as I could relate. Apparently, there are rules such as taking your turn and being polite, making an agenda, and not veering away from the book—crazy talk.
You also must be wary of reading someone’s third cousin on their mother’s side self-published manuscript. It will never be good.
A Book is a Book
Our book club is not an entirely veiled sham. We attempt to be book-clubbish and always pick a book. It is done very officially by writing the names of our choices on little pieces of paper and throwing them in a hat. Since we are usually three sheets to the wind by the time the title is picked, I am convinced the picker of titles just picks the book they want to (not) read.
Someone does on occasion print out questions. But no matter what the novel subject matter is the discussion always veers off to a hot mess neighbor or an ungrateful child.
Over the years, I participated in other book clubs. My second book club had way wiser husbands. They banished us to an upstairs meeting room at the local supermarket. Sober and eating overpriced cut-up fruit and salad bar remnants was not a promising start. But it was a night out away from kids. The issue was that Wegmans closed at midnight, and we often found we were not finished (not) discussing the book and continued our conversations in the parking lot. These were the days before Find my Friend, so my husband never believed I was in the parking lot yacking until 1 am. I can’t believe we never had any mishaps. I live in a sleepy suburban town, but hanging in a deserted shopping center in the middle of the night is not always ideal.
In Conclusion
My book club may not hold up to any lofty book club standards or ideals if that is even a thing. There is no critical thinking, analysis, or profound observations. However, there is a camaraderie and a joyfulness that no lack of ground rules can shatter. I may not leave our meetings with great thoughts and, pun intended, book smarts, but there is nothing more valuable than the friendships I have made not bonding over books.
I also do love a good glass of wine or three.
Life happened because I turned the pages.
Alberto Manguel
