I can't believe I didn't think of writing that article... book clubs have been so talked about in the last ten years or so, I fled mine when I became the only still-single girl and the evenings revolved around wedding planning discussions and/or mother-in-law bashing. It was also competitive in terms of dinner served and just started to gross me out in general about how sometimes a group of women can do weird shit to eachother. Getting out was tough. I wanted to choose my own books again and not have to give them salacious updates on my pathetic dating life. Freedom was wonderful.
I've been reading the books my fifth grader is reading at school and for book reports so we can have "book club" at home. I'd forgotten how much I loved "My Side of the Mountain" and "Where the Red Fern Grows."
The book club I was part of eventually fell apart because of diverging tastes. It was supposed to be nonfiction-oriented but then some people wanted to veer into Self Help Land and that was the end of that. There was no bridging that divide.
BUT, books are my crack and if there are any Jezzies in SF (or the inner Bay Area) who are planning or would like to start a book club, I'd be happy to join....
Book clubs? Meh. Now *I* started a knitting club. That's the good stuff, baby. (And we just had a fabulous potluck holiday party yesterday. My secret santa gift was a skein of Smooshy. Whee!)
@Kivrin: I thought the same thing, before throwing the knitting across the room because it wasn't "perfect" enough. Many, many times. However, the cold weather and coziness of winter are tempting me to get back on that horse.
Hey, I'm a huge intellectual snob, but what was this woman thinking? Bok clubs can be fun, but you shouldn't expect to read Kafka or any such. It's a marginally more purposeful coffee klatch!
On the one hand, I love my middle-brow book club. The people are nice, we have a good time. On the other hand, I want to be in a really snotty book club. Like, I want people who are serious about books and want to really delve into them.
This month I'm skipping because it's a memoir about food. Not my cup of tea.
You know what, though, Fine Lines was as close as I ever came to enjoying a book group. If I hadn't read the book, I didn't have to participate, and if I had, it was a 98% certainty that I liked it and then I loved to talk about it with other people who liked the book also. But that was posthumous; it wasn't deciding what we were going to read and then reading it and then having to report in. My professional life is full of reading things just because someone else decided we were going to read x book at y time. I fail at book clubs because for pleasure reading, I want to read what I want to read when I want to read it.
I am finishing my master's thesis and I have found that other graduate students are the biggest book snobs. People come over to my apartment and see "Eugenics in Race and State" next to "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 3" and get into my face about how could I fill my mind with such drivel, I should be reading Updike, blahblahblah." The reality is, I do read the sophisticated stuff, but when I need to relax and get my brain to stop racing, a good old-fashioned chick lit/romance/thriller is what does the job.
Right now my bedtime reading is "Queen of the Damned" cause I read all 4 Twilight books over Thanksgiving break (insomnia + insanely fast reading skills) and now am on a vampire kick. And I essentially read anything and everything.
@monkeyriot: I have a good girlfriend who's finishing her master's in English Lit, focusing primarily on 18th (or 19th?) century British Lit, of which I have read very little, comparatively. She gives me SUCH. SHIT. for devouring the Twilight books (all four, twice, in 3 weeks), Harry Potter, and chick lit (none of which she ever reads herself, of course). But I read ALL THE TIME. All the time. Some of it is literature, and some of it is plain old fiction. I am of the school of thought that reading something, even if it is formulaic and superficial, is better than reading nothing at all. I read super-boring medically dense court cases all damn day, and when I come home, I want to read something I can still understand after a glass (or three) of wine. So whatever, literature snobs. STFU.
@monkeyriot: I tend to blather on about subversive readings and then spit out a made-up thesis title to explain away any of my guilty pleasure reading... or any of my guilty pleasures, really. It works!
Wasn't Hortense or another editor thinking of starting an online book club on Jezebel? I was really excited to read about it and was looking forward to it but since I never saw it mentioned again, I was starting to think I hallucinated that.Lol.
Whatever happened to that and can we start one? I would love to see the picks and have fun readintg the discussions on them and all.
I want to start a book swap club, where we all meet and trade books around, white elephant style. Then at the next meeting everyone has to give an old-school book report on what they got. (1-2 pages, lined paper, Crayola illustrations a bonus!)
We would award each other awesome stickers for our book reports, eat delicious foods, and drink. Anyone who did not do their book report would have to perform an interpretive dance based on their book title and jacket copy.
@Angua van der Woodsen: Okay, I adore you. That comment just got you a big old FRIEND click from me. I'd love to do old-fashioned book reports. And I'd say really supportive, encouraging things about blurb-inspired interpretive dances. I'd also point and laugh hysterically, but only after my third glass of wine.
I'm a member of an women's group that picks a bunch of titles and then we read what we want to and each talk about it to the group (or not) who then can decide whether or not to read a book based on our "reports." It's way more fun this way and avoids all the pitfalls.
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The book club I was part of eventually fell apart because of diverging tastes. It was supposed to be nonfiction-oriented but then some people wanted to veer into Self Help Land and that was the end of that. There was no bridging that divide.
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12/09/08
BUT, books are my crack and if there are any Jezzies in SF (or the inner Bay Area) who are planning or would like to start a book club, I'd be happy to join....
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You rang?
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This month I'm skipping because it's a memoir about food. Not my cup of tea.
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Right now my bedtime reading is "Queen of the Damned" cause I read all 4 Twilight books over Thanksgiving break (insomnia + insanely fast reading skills) and now am on a vampire kick. And I essentially read anything and everything.
12/08/08
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Whatever happened to that and can we start one? I would love to see the picks and have fun readintg the discussions on them and all.
12/08/08
We would award each other awesome stickers for our book reports, eat delicious foods, and drink. Anyone who did not do their book report would have to perform an interpretive dance based on their book title and jacket copy.
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@ladeedah: The jet is waiting. That's right, a JET! Woodsen out!
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