Thoughts on Book Clubs

When I moved to Montreal at the end of August 2010, I was sad that I wasn't going to get to join A's book club. A. had just joined one when I left and it sounded really good. There were about 6-7 women and they met every 6 weeks to two months at a different person's house to discuss whatever book they had picked. A. has told me some of the books they've read and a lot of them have been books I've either read or have wanted to read. When I eventually do move back to Toronto, if that book club still exists, I am looking forward to joining it.

I have never been in a book club, and I am very curious about them. I wonder how much I would like them? I know I would like them if I could choose who exactly would be in it, but I am more hesitant about being in a book club with strangers. Suppose I don't get along with some of the people in it? Or find them annoying? (My desire to try one out outweighs my hesitation however, and so I will join A's if I am still invited.) I wish so much that 1. all of my favourite people and best friends lived in the same place and 2. that we could be in a book club together :)

I already do kind of have quasi-book clubs going on. For a while (and I guess it still exists but we haven't read a book in a really long time) I was in a celebrity book club with M. and E. We read really bad (but fun to read books) like Tori Spelling's So noTORIous and MommyWood. Then we'd go for Indian food and talk about the books. Hmmm, once I move back to Toronto we definitely need to get that book club back in full swing too. Once I received a letter from N. in which she expressed how much she liked "our informal book club." That made me so happy because I hadn't thought to label it like that but we do have a sort of informal book club going on! Every year I give N. a book for her birthday (which is soon, December 14th and I still haven't chosen which book I am going to give her this year!) and she usually gives me one for mine. I always try to read the book she gave me relatively soon after my birthday and then I love discussing it with her. In January 2006 I read the first of many books I've read by Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood - and to my delight later that spring I found out that N. was a big Murakami fan. I remember very clearly one bright sunny June day in the last June I spent in Berkeley meeting up with N. and going for a walk over all northside, including to the Berkeley Rose Garden, and having a long and wonderful conversation with her about Murakami.

Finally, S. and I really and truly have book ESP! I finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (which is one of my very favourite books) in early June 2007. I told S. about it the next time we talked on the phone, and was going to urge her to read it soon when she told me she had actually read it a few months earlier. The same thing happened this summer when I read Ann Patchett's latest book State of Wonder and wanted S. to read it too so we could discuss, only for her to tell me (again) that she already had earlier in the summer. I know the same thing has happened a few other times too. How cool! The best part is we can then discuss the book right away without having to wait for one of us to read it.

 

Another cool idea is what my friend H.'s sister N. did: she had a virtual book club where she and two friends would meet for bi-monthly gchats about a book they'd all read. That is a very good idea and something I might actually try to get going one day.

When I was in high school, I really liked Oprah's Book Club. In fact, in grade 12 I wrote a whole essay comparing different books from Oprah's Book Club, discussing which themes were present in all, etc. Sometimes when I would tell people I liked Oprah's Book Club picks or read articles about it, there was this underlying current of disdain. Some people (mostly male) dismissed Oprah's Book Club as having only lightweight books or books that only women would like (as opposed to the really serious and important books that men like to read). That kind of thinking still makes me angry! Especially because it couldn't be farther from the truth. I still think Jonathan Franzen is an arrogant and obnoxious person for criticizing Oprah's Book Club when his novel The Corrections was an Oprah pick. For reasons I can't fathom now I actually read The Corrections and for what it's worth, although I read it over 10 years ago, I can't remember a single thing about the book (which is not the case for plenty of other of books I read 10 years ago or longer.) Jonathan Franzen's dismay at being   associated with Oprah's Book Club just struck me as so ridiculous. A. (a different one than above) is a huge Oprah fan and told me about the interview Jonathan Franzen finally did give to Oprah a few years ago when (for whatever reason... Oprah is too nice!) Oprah chose his novel Freedom as a pick in her book club. A. told me that Jonathan Franzen had a good excuse for his behaviour (the excuse unfortunately now escapes me) and he and Oprah got along well. I still hold a grudge though (Oprah: why are you hugging him in the picture below?!?), and have zero desire to ever read Freedom.

 

The bottom line is that I love reading and I love discussing books with other people. And whether I am in a book club or not, I am always going to keep reading books and wanting to discuss them with others.