Waiting for Book Club

The definition of insanity-When you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.

For three years now, I’ve lived in a small, affluent community full of many women, who, like me, are fortunate enough not to have to work full time to make ends meet. As a result, many of us have some time on our hands, especially if our children are in school all day, or out of the nest and launched into the outside world.

What better way to spend some time with others than at a book club?

Well, I wouldn’t know, since I’ve never been to one. Not here, anyway.

Full disclosure: I did attend one book club ONCE in Southern California, in a similar community, and I was one of the only people who really wanted to talk about the book. Because the word “book” was in the title of the event, I had assumed we’d be talking about it, at least in a cursory manner. I subsequently learned that wine and gossip were really the highlights of the evening.

Flash forward a decade or so...we’ve just moved to this little town outside NYC, and I know NOBODY. So what better way to get ensconced in the community than to attend an evening full of strangers where I’m likely to offend at least half the people by holding a controversial opinion? I mean, I don’t even know the lay of the land, here. What was I thinking?

So, over the past three years, every two or three months, I’d get the Paperless Post invite, reply that YES, I would be attending said meeting. I'd find out the featured book, order it on Amazon, read it, and then not go to the event. Every. Single. Time.

I was motivated by good intentions: I was new, I wanted to make friends, get to know my community, But a book club isn’t necessarily the way to do that.

Because, yes, I’ve read a lot of those book club recommendations. But I have to say, most of them are deeply depressing. And I don’t mind downers, or dark shit. I thought “Fall on Your Knees” was amazing, and it had incest and death dripping from its pages. I tried to read “A Little Life” and I just could not do it. Life is too short to be that bummed out. (This from a diehard Smiths, The Cure, and "Black Mirror" fan.)

It’s just that there are different kinds of dark, bleak, depressing stories. And as someone with chronic and pernicious depression, I kind of have to watch my back on some of these books of the month. If I’m having a rough patch, I really don’t want to read about suicide, war, famine, or alienation. (And I NEVER want to read about dead babies. Sorry, “Beloved”.)

But on my good days, I’m mostly okay with darkness. Loved “The Handmaid’s Tale”. But it’s not a laugh riot. I find broad comedies too, I don’t know, broad, I guess. When a book is so formulaic that you know the entire plot by the end of the first chapter, what’s the point? It’s like eating a whole box of Entenmanns or something--you shouldn’t have bought it in the first place, because you knew you were going to eat pretty much all of it. Do not engage.

But getting back to the book club paradox. The more books I read, the less my chances of actually attending the event seemed to be. It got to the point about a year and a half ago when I started to buy and read the featured book, pretty much know I wasn’t going to attend, even though I’d reply yes, change it to no, and then wonder why I was so flakey about this.

Partly, I am happy to report, it is because three years in, I have made some wonderful friends, and continue to meet new and interesting people who may or may not share my worldview, but are fun to talk to nonetheless. I’m in a French group. A hiking group. A writing group. I teach Improv. Socializing is awesome.

The other day, I was walking and talking with a wise and beautiful friend and bemoaning the fact that another book club evening was coming up, that I’d read the book, I’d said I’d attend, and knew I probably wouldn’t. She pointed out to me that perhaps I just really don’t WANT to belong to a book club. That maybe I THINK I should go, but really, I don’t want to. I mean, I’m in the community now, I don’t need to go on the “I don’t know anyone, this is like dating” special mixer events anymore. So why am I fooling myself? She also shared that in her experience, book clubs weren’t so much about the books, usually. Which was my limited experience, as you know.

But the thing is, I don’t drink a lot of wine (see depression, above) and I really DO want to talk about the book. The most recent one I read, “The Immortalists” was classic darkness and beauty--depressing as shit, and I couldn’t put it down. Damn you, Chloe Benjamin. The whole premise of the book was that four siblings find out from a soothsaying type of charlatan (or is she?) the dates of their individual deaths. Hello, red flag!

Plus, one of the characters had a condition I also have, and I thought, am I really going to go to a complete stranger’s house and talk about my feelings and reactions to this book about death and mental illness with a whole bunch of other complete strangers? What am I going to do, chomp on a canape and say, “Yes, it was so nuanced, so textured, showing how ephemeral life can be, and how damning one’s perception of one’s fate can become. And I also struggle with mental illness, how about you?” For fuck’s sake.

In fact, this very night, this very minute, as I write this, that very book club event is going on just a couple of miles down the road. And, natch, I am not there.

Time to stop living this lie. Drop the charade.

I just like good book recommendations. And all I really need for that are the invites, and Amazon.

 And my actual, real, live friends.