Why I Hate Book Clubs

(and buddy-reads are far superior)

Dear Liz,

As I pictured you and your friends all cozy and bookish for your Christmas Reading Party, I was so glad I wasn’t invited.

I’ve gotten some feedback recently that I’ve been a real grouch the past few months. The words “spiky,” “harsh,” and “out of character” were used to describe me. While it came as a shock, it also made sense. I’ve been battling some thangs, one of which is a mold allergy here in wet Oregon that has made me–and my swollen, watery eyes–truly miserable this fall. There’s more, but I’ll spare you. Alas, I was kept company by the good Mrs. Norris in Mansfield Park bitching about her troubles: “I must struggle through my sorrows and difficulties as I can.” Indeed, one must.

Anyhoo, my spikiness and your reading party got me thinking about book clubs.

I have tried a few times to join my friends’ book clubs. I inevitably attend one meeting with good intentions only to find that…I have “strong” opinions and I don’t care who hears them. I have often hated the book selection. I have often hated how people want to be nice about a book that, according to me, doesn’t deserve their time and attention. (I hate to name names here, and truthfully, only ever do so in person. But mostly these are books by authors of very high-brow literary fiction that get a lot of attention.) I have several friends who won’t stop reading a book after 100 pages if it’s not grabbing them. I feel no such compunction.

That is mostly because I’ve read and written a lot. I have standards about plot and structure. (Like, I think they should exist.) Lately those standards have come into conflict with literary fiction’s abandonment of plot and the publishing junta’s abandonment of editing.

Another part is that I’m not a joiner. I don’t like groups.

Far from the madding reading crowds, I can’t be bothered to keep track of my reading. Nor do I set reading goals. My reading list is a jumbled mess of shiny objects that I follow through a labyrinth I have no desire to analyze or understand. I don’t organize the TBR piles spreading all over my house. It’s the wild wind I adore, the tramping through wet fields following birdsong.

It’s not that I don’t take recommendations from friends. In fact, because I’ve been burned too many times by the mainstream literary PR machines, the contemporary novels I read (and let’s define contemporary as being written in the past decade) come to me almost exclusively as recommendations.

All this being said, I have not met a Great Book I have not liked. You and I talked recently about my childhood resembling the nineteenth century and perhaps that is why I love their books. Maybe I am fit only for a Great Books reading club (certainly why I love Naomi Kanakia’s Substack so much). Give me Henry James or give me death. Give me a full, emotionally inhabited world of surprise and delight.

Novels these days, on the whole, lack aspiration. As a would-be novelist myself, I know it’s extremely difficult to write one, and even harder to get a book deal. Writers/editors have forgotten what a novel can do and what it’s for. But again, I say these awful things because I read a lot, so I feel entitled to my opinions.

The thing I love about books and novels in particular, is the connection with another person or cast of persons. To slip into the mind of a fellow human and see life through their eyes. When we first met, I was astonished by your wide range of reading habits – from SF/F to the classics (you quoted Donne at me at one point on a Zoom) to the Bible. My kind of reader!

And now, we are buddy-reading all the Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, and rereading all the Austens! What joy. What simplicity to order my life. Speeding into 2025, reading will be my foundation. Always.

Serious readers are my people. Just not in the evening with a glass of wine, a bowl of hummus, and the latest buzzy novel. Nope, none of that for me.

With love,

-mel

Shiny objects.