Casey’s Literary Rants

My friend took that picture and sent it to me because she can imagine me going to a party and only talking about books/book clubs with other people. I laughed at first but it got me thinking – just because I read all the time, does that automatically mean I’m supposed to be in a million book clubs? ‘Cause I’m not.

My very first experience with a book club was in my senior year of high school. Our school’s principal started the club in September, and despite the assurances of my fellow classmates that they too were interested, I was the only person who showed up. (I got a free, fresh baked brownie out of it, so I wasn’t too mad at everyone else.) I was put in charge of the next month’s meeting and I managed to get a whooping total of eight people to show up (including myself and the principal). After that, for the rest of the school year, basically the only people who showed up were my friends Lizzie and Joseph. So instead of hanging out at school and talking about a book (since neither one of them were really into reading) we would all walk down the street to a pizza place and split a large pizza while complaining about boyfriends/ex-boyfriends/guys in general.  Oh yeah, those were some good times.

That right there is the extent of my experience with book clubs. At least, in the real world. Online I’m part of four book clubs: two for YA books, one for mystery books and the last one (which I’m proud to say I co-run) is a monthly challenge to read five books that fit whatever topics we pick out.

Before you ask, the answer is no. I never manage to read all the books from each group every month. (Although, the two YA groups have been fairly inactive for the past several months.)  I have a massive, ever-growing, pile of books from each of the challenges sitting on the floor next to my bookshelves (they don’t fit anywhere else) that I do plan to read. Eventually. Maybe someday.

Anyway, I personally don’t think that in person and online book clubs are the same. In every single online group I’m in, whenever we finish a book, no one ever gets into a deep discussion over the book we read. Take for example, when one of my YA groups read Looking For Alaska by John Green. Everyone pretty much posted the same thing, saying, “I loved the book but didn’t like Alaska.” Although we all agreed on that, no one really went into the reasons why we didn’t like her. We just left it at that and went on to the next book.

Now, I’m sure that there are groups out there that do have lengthy discussions about every part of the book they’ve read; but I still think that, when you’re sitting in a room with a group of people for an hour, it’s much easier to get into those long discussions about every detail in the book. Unless your book club is like mine from back in high school and all you talk about is boys.

Despite my preference over online groups, I have yet to find and/or join a new book club. For one thing, I rarely read my books in time for the online groups, I doubt that would really change; and as much as I absolutely love talking about books, I really don’t have the time to go to a book club. Yeah, the library where I work has two book clubs that meet once a month but they’re always meeting when I’m supposed to be working.

So, if you’re like me and want to talk about books 24/7 then you should join a book club. Hopefully, unlike me, you have the time to actually get involved in whatever group or club you join or wish to. At least I have my rants to get into lengthy discussions about whatever books I want.