The Story So Far:

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was a member of a book club. The wine and the nibbles were OK*, the problem was the books. It seemed to me that in a bid to avoid causing any upset, other members of the group were deliberately picking the blandest books they had ever read. This one, for example. Each month we would meet, only to discover that half the group hadn’t made it through their assigned soporific. We would then have a discussion in which pretty much everyone seemed far too polite (or maybe far too afraid of being thought an ignorant peasant) to offer any genuine opinions. I hung in there, though. Sooner or later it would be my turn to chose the book for the month, and I meant to stir things up a bit, though I hadn’t yet decided whether my weapon of choice would be “Crash” or “American Psycho”… Unfortunately it was not to be. The book club was killed by somebody nominating “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens, and every time the organiser tried to book the next meeting, it would turn out that no one had managed to read it yet and everyone wanted extra time.

It is now about 5 years later and the book club has reformed, but in the meantime what little patience I ever had seems to have evaporated. Having received a list of the books they plan to read, I have chosen not to rejoin. As I am a miserable, old curmudgeon, I have formed a book club of one.

I will read the books I fancy reading and say what I like about them.
I am not interested in looking clever.
I am not interested in reading women’s books about feelings.
I expect I will miss the nibbles…



*Apart from one meeting just after Christmas when the majority of the group were “detoxing” in the mistaken belief that a month of mince pies can be nullified by a week of bottled water.