Doomed! Doomed!

I love talking books with people. And because I work in a library, it tends to happen rather frequently. One thing that often crops up in these natterings—apart from the fact that Joyce is unreadable, of course—is that book clubs never seem to work out.

No matter how friendly you are with the people in the club, unless you have adventurous readers, the big problem seems to be in coming up with a book that people will like and find interesting. If you don’t know the other members well, the problem is tripled. Hell, I judge myself sometimes based on what I read. I can only wonder what others think of me if I were to suggest something like Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death or Barry Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist or John McWhorter’s What Language Is.

Reading is just such an individual experience. We all read at different paces. We’re all in the mood for different kinds of books at different times. I once tried to join a group, but I read so quickly that I forgot what the books were about by the time the next meeting was scheduled. Another group I killed because I talked everyone into reading Anna Karenina*.

I think the best kind of book club would be one where the participants gathered just to talk about books, without a book of the month thing. It should be about sharing great reads and talking about characters and styles and authors, preferably over a pot or two of tea. With cake. 

* Which worked out about as well as you’d expect.