#323 Go to a Book Club
Whenever I think about a book club, I recall that Seinfeld episode where George joins a book club. Rather than read the book, he tries to watch the movie an hilarious hijinx ensue!
I didn’t even think they still had book clubs. Don’t people just watch Oprah for that sort of thing? But I was browsing Meetup.com for scary things to do and found a Sci-Fi Book Club. It seemed like an interesting way to meet some new people and to discuss a book obviously. I haven’t really had a group discussion about a book since college.
I had actually tried to sign up for the book club last month but I didn’t have enough time to read the book. This month was really no different. I didn’t get the book, The Hunger Games, until a week before today.
The book is 374 pages. I tried to read every night before I went to bed. It felt like college. I kept putting it off and putting it off. Not because the book was bad. I actually liked it and it was easy to read. But last night I had 170 pages to go. I considered giving up but then I realized, what was the big deal? I love reading. Or I used to. These days I don’t read as many books as I should. When I was younger, I devoured them. This wasn’t some text book. It was a fun sci-fi novel.
So I got into bed like I used to do (except I was reading from an iPad), settled in and powered through the rest of the book by 12:30am.
The meetup was at a Denny’s in Santa Monica. As I was driving there, I started to think what the book club would be like. Suddenly I was worried about looking stupid in front of a bunch of strangers. What if they were hyper-intelligent literary scholars and I couldn’t hold my own with them?
When I got to Denny’s, I noticed the stoplights were out nearby. When I got into the restaurant, it was clear the power was out. I walked around for a bit then noticed about four people sitting by the door. One of the women was holding up a copy of The Hunger Games. I had found the book club.
We decided to go across the street to Norm’s since it looked like they still had power. By the time we got a table, there were 10 people there for the book club. Unfortunately we couldn’t get seated together so they split us into two groups of 5.
My group had a young Asian guy, an Asian guy my age, an Asian girl and a white girl. Hey wait a minute. Was this Asian discrimination here? I think it was just a coincidence. There was that usual social awkwardness in the beginning. But like I’ve said recently, I’m able to work past that now.
While I thought there might be some sort of agenda, we basically just had a free-form discussion for an hour or so. I was assertive and brought up some topics of discussion. Actually, I might have been the most talkative one there. Everyone liked the book for the most part. I thought the idea wasn’t that original but it was well executed. I also really enjoyed the main character, Katniss. She has two potential love interests in the book and but there was no clear-cut romance. She was a strong, interesting female character.
I enjoyed myself. Everyone was very nice albeit a bit geeky and nerdy. It was, after all, not only a book club but a Sci-Fi book club. But geeky and nerdy is my sweet spot so I felt pretty comfortable. I’d actually like to do it again. It was nice to be able to talk with smart people about something besides movies, sports or video games. The stuff I usually talk to people about. Also, it would at least get me to read a book a month.
