The Pros and Cons of Book Clubs

As part of this project I’ve been trying to examine the “why” of this backlog. What caused it? Why did I purchase a book and not actually read said book? It’s been an interesting exercise, and one that has made me realize a couple of things:

1. I can’t pass up a book on sale. It’s just not part of my nature.
2. Finding new authors and new stories is extremely enticing to me.
3. Being in a book club was a great idea, but might not have been the best for my buying habits.

If you’ve been following along, I’ve tossed my book club under the bus quite a bit as a reason for not reading books purchased during a specific time frame. Today I’d like to dig into that a bit more and look at what I loved about our book club, and what I found to be a bit more limiting.

I’ll start with a little history about how the book club came to be…

While I’m sure this comes as no surprise, many of my friends enjoy fantasy and science fiction which would always lead to “hey, have you read” conversations. One day my friend Daniel, with whom I worked, looked at me and said “we’ve talked about it for years, but let’s start a book club.”

So we did. We started a book club focused on the books we really wanted to read. At the peak, we had seven or eight active members, with a core of four or five people that were at almost every meeting. The list of books we read (or at least tried to read) was thirty-seven titles long.

Even though I’m using the past tense, there was never really an end to the book club. Life got in the way, time was at a premium, and things just sort of petered out. We would still chat now and then, either messaging about a book one of just read, or lamenting how busy we were.

Now that I’m on the verge of waxing nostalgic about the book club, I might as well start with the things I miss:

• I was often exposed to authors I hadn’t heard of before.
• Having a group to discuss books with made me read with a bit more of a critical eye.
• We all took turns picking books, so while the genres stayed in the science fiction and fantasy realms, we wound up getting into a lot of sub-genres.

I also really miss seeing my friends. I know part of that is just Middle-of-a-Global-Pandemic Dan lamenting the fact that he hasn’t seen people in person for almost a year, but it was a great excuse to get together for an evening. We would talk about our book, pick the next book, and then we’d play a board game. It was a great time.

We had some great discussions about the books we read, and our tastes differed enough that we were able to discuss contrasting views of each work. There would have been nothing worse than all of us agreeing about everything.

However, I did encounter challenges with being a book club:

• We met monthly, which meant I was almost always reading a book for our book club. This left little time for books that I wanted to read on my own.
• As I’ve already discussed in a previous post, my favorite genres are usually filled with books that are part of a series. We read quite a few of those, but it’s hard to keep up with series when you’re always reading the next book club book.
• There are sub-genres I’m just not a fan of…like dystopian fiction (sorry, Ben). And when one of the members really enjoys those books? You’re looking at a couple of those a year.
• I would experience extreme guilt when not finishing a book. Some of the books on this list were purchased for book club and never even started. So I may have to finally chime in on those missed titles.

Look, I loved a lot of things about book club. The discussions we had were great, and I discovered some new authors. But, in many ways, the book club led to a lot of the backlog I’m now working my way through. More than once I told Laura that I was frustrated with my inability to read the books I wanted to read.

I am fully aware how ridiculous this might sound. There are many folks out there that would love to be in a book club, and would never have the issues I had. But at the end of the day, I wound up looking at the books we read as a chore – there were always other books I would have rather read, and even the selection I made weren’t top on my list.

The question now becomes this – would I join a book club once I’m caught up? And I really don’t know. In theory once I complete my backlog I’ll have a much better control over my buying impulses, and would be able to read a book club selection in addition to my leisure books. Only time will tell!