My mother and I played book club, to a certain
extent, when I was growing up. Rather my mother humoured me as I nagged about
having a book club while I was growing up. She’d dish out suggestions for me to
read and I’d read them and tell her if I liked them or not, I never really
asked for her opinion, which I suppose didn’t make it very clubby. It got
easier as I got older; there are more books to offer once you open your mind
past Enid Blyton. Summer time would come and I’d get antsy without my regular
routine and my mother and I would walk to the library and choose some books.
Getting into the Stephen King books were fun and a kind of coming of age type
moment, Carrie became a woman in the locker room at her school, I became a
woman in poetic sort of way in the dusty old library of my hometown.
As fun
as my discussions with my mother were, I wanted more. Now don’t get me wrong
this first “book club” was influential in a way that I will never shake off,
she became the yard stick for all others. My friends and I didn’t share the
same passion for the same themes. Sure we loved books but diving into the
narrator’s psyche or the heroine’s repressed sexual frustration wasn’t a popular topic with most 16 year old girls,
old couples with Alzheimer’s however, ah a literary masterpiece! If I thought I’d
find my much sought after literature forum at school then I was sorely
mistaken. For the five years spent at school I was assigned to read four
novels. Oh how I longed to read a book a month and connect to each protagonist in
a deep and meaningful way.
Enter university.
Studying English at university was like giving a blind man his sight. I had so
much reading to do! I engrossed myself in the delights of fiction from all
genres. I experienced the eccentricities of Geoffrey Chaucer, the loneliness of
Mary Shelly, the innate ability of Charles Dickens to capture the soul of the
ordinary people, and so much more.
My all time favourite book from
university was Charlotte Bronte’s Jane
Eyre. The book stirred something in me that allowed me to see Jane Eyre’s
wounded and tormented but ever strong spirit. The Freudian aspect to Bronte’s
writing was so apparent that it gave me great joy to dissect the repression and
transference that went hand in hand with the sexuality theme of the novel. At last
I felt at home being able to discuss the things that I found so important with
my peers who felt the same.
How sad it was when university
ended and I no longer had the safe environment of a seminar to discuss the ins
and outs of Victorian literature. What would fill this book shaped hole in my
life? So for a few years after university I went back to the process of reading
a book and then finding some friend in the bar at the weekend who also read it.
I’d proceed to drunkenly talk about the book’s characters and underlying themes
and once morning came I’d hold my head in my hands in embarrassment. Was it
necessary for me to go on and on like that? Could I not have talked about the
latest episode of Eastenders like normal people? I’d go see a film based on a
book that I’d read and whine to my boyfriend that it didn’t happen like that in
the book. I’d inform him of the significance of such and such wearing green all
the time, while he kindly agreed that that was fascinating.
Then one day, with thanks to
Carmella Soprano I have to admit, it occurred to me to set up my own book club.
I had enough friends that liked to read to host a monthly group meeting. And so
I emailed my friends and they all thought it was a great idea. Why had nobody
thought of doing this before? After around 8 of my friends agreeing, the book club
came into formation! How exciting! I was left with the difficulty in choosing
the first book. What a difficult task I had in front of me, should I choose a
crowd pleaser, a classic, or something totally unheard of?
Until next time...
