We have a great book club in my neighborhood.  A group of ladies (ranging from 5-25) meets each month at a different person’s home.  Everyone brings something to eat or wine, both are which are consumed in abundance.  It’s a great, fun time, but book club for me has one problem: the books.

I originally joined book club to try to expand my reading selections.  I read–a lot–but I read a rather narrow range of interests.  Non-fiction (usually science related, although not always), or science fiction.  I thought I should expand my horizons a bit, maybe find something enjoyable I wouldn’t normally read on my own.  This was a good idea in theory.

I read about six books I would never normally pick, books that book clubs all over the U.S. are reading, books that get great Amazon reviews, books that have a consensus: they are good.  Most of these fall into the category of “women’s fiction”–whatever that means.  I pretty much hated every one of them.  They bored the crap out of me. A lot of the books feature extended sessions inside the protagonist’s head: what they are thinking about, their demons, what they think of events.  Romances, moral quandaries and the like. The thing is, unless there’s some crazy space faring science/alternate dimensions/worlds blowing up/black holes or the story is actually true and not fiction, I can’t bring myself to care much.  Perhaps this is a side effect of having to read so many boring Thomas Hardy novels in high school.  

So, I’m a book club failure.  I can’t decide if I should keep torturing myself by reading these books, just so I can attend the fun social aspect without looking like a loser, or if I should just give up and realize–I like what I like.