A Book Club of One

I don't like book clubs.

With as much as I love to read, that seems unusual (at least to me). After all, presumably book clubs are made of people who love books as much - if not more - than me.

So I've tried them. Multiple times. And every time I run into the same problem I had with my lit classes in college. I love to read. I love to soak in a well crafted story and let it permeate my consciousness.

I don't love to pick it apart.

But every now and then I read a book that makes me wish I had a book club made of people like me who would want to sit in a circle having just finished a story and just sigh happily together. Maybe we would say, "Oh! When this happened?" And there would be no need for further explanation because they would simply get it.

Yes. That. Exactly.

To be able to know we'd shared the experience without having to try and box it in with discussion and analysis and clinical dissection.

That's a book club I'd join.

In a heartbeat.

What sparked this rumination? I finished The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles yesterday. And I'm not sure I've yet recovered. It was beautiful. And haunting. And lovely. And heart wrenching. And the ending was completely wrong. But also exactly what it should be.

A Gentleman in Moscow (same author) did the same thing.

So did At the Water's Edge by Sara Gruen.
And The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George.

And a handful of other books. And every time I finish one, I think to myself how much I wish I had a book club. Then I remember...

I don't like book clubs.