book club – Manda Kay Writes

Who says you can’t have a book club where you don’t read the same book and discuss it?

Lots. Lots of people say this. And they’ve got a point there, but here we are anyway.

For those of you who don’t know, I “run” a book club on the basis of everyone reads whatever they feel and we meet up sometimes. I say “run” because things aren’t going exactly like I planned. But that’s part of the fun with starting something new, right?

Just to recap, I started this club just to start discussions in general about reading, and for everyone to meet up once every few months for something fun. So far, I do most of the talking on the Facebook group, and maybe a quarter of the people who are in the group are able to go to the event. The club isn’t quite taking off like I hoped for a variety of reasons. Mainly, everyone is super busy with their own life—myself included. Also, there’s the issue of discussion: what do we talk about? I had some ideas in my last post about the club, but I haven’t put them into practice.

My hope is that with this meet-up that it’ll rekindle some interest and get people excited about reading again!

So, without further adieu, I bring you: Bad Tinder Date.

What you do is you take a book you’ve read that you hate, and you gift it to someone else. Inside the book, you include a breakup letter to it wherever you stopped reading. So, if you stopped within the first few pages, put it there. If you suffered all the way through, put it at the back. In the letter, you write why you hated it. What did it do wrong? What made you stop? Or, if you finished it, like I did, why did you keep going?

Here is my book and breakup letter:

And I folded it up into a little heart for an added touch:

Obviously, you picked up the book for some reason. And you don’t want to spoil the surprise for the next person who reads it. So what you do is you give it the best profile picture ever; AKA, wrap it all pretty-like:

What’s a good Tinder profile without a blip to tell the people who you are? On the paper (or a separate tag, if you want to get fancy), write out the book’s best characteristics. “But Manda,” you might be asking, “I hated this book. What could I possibly say?” First rule: Don’t lie. Second rule: You can never embellish enough. Here’s what I wrote for mine:

Tell me liiiies tell me sweet little liiiiiies…….white liiiiiiiies……..

And the finished product:::

Damn, that book be looking its best!

To convince everyone to put some effort into their dates, I decided to do prizes for three categories:

Your Body is a Ten but Then You Opened Your Mouth (or best wrapping job)

Your Resume Said “Sanitation Engineer,” I Didn’t Think You Meant “Trash Boy” (or best profile blip)

It’s Not Me, It’s You (or best breakup letter)

And that’s it! We’ll see how it goes. I’m excited to see what everyone else comes up with. When I know, I’ll let you know. 😉

I have a dream. And I don’t mean that in the MLK Jr sense, but rather just in the overall ooo shiny sense. Make sense?

No?

Okay, I know I ask you to do this basically all the time, but work with me on this one.

Imagine, if you will a gathering of people with a similar interest. A club, if you will. And the interest? Reading the written word. Book club, bitches.

Those who read together…um…honestly the first place my mind went is peed together. Not sure if anyone reads the hilarity that is the under the photo caption, but if you do, congratulations. You made it to the peek of comedy. Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Now, you’re probably saying, “Yo, Manda, book clubs are a thing. They are already a thing. Why are you writing about them?” To which I say, “Because I can, and because it’s not a normal book club.”

Traditional book clubs are everything that I love and hate about book clubs. On one hand, you have a group of people who love reading who come in to discuss what they read, and probably do so while getting drunk on cheap wine. On the other hand, to really get anything out of said book club, everyone has to read the same book. Don’t get me wrong. If I didn’t have a lot of other things going on, I probably wouldn’t mind it. The issue is if I’m told what to read every month, I’m not going to have time to read what I want to read, and I’m going to lose interest fast.

So a book club, but minus the agenda. A group of people who love reading, who don’t want to be told what to do. A group of people with a low key problem with authority. 😉

This all begs a single question: How the fuck does that work? It’s a good question, fair even, and it’s one that I’m still working out myself. How does one engage people when the people are all over the place? How does discussion work when there is so much to discuss?

How do we organize chaos???

Why do people like me thrive in this nonsense????

Here are a couple things I’ve tried thus far (that have ultimately failed) (whoops):

Facebook group discussions
In the beginning, things were looking up for Books’n’Shiz (I’m not very creative with naming things, yo). I was able to get everyone to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about what they liked to read. It was a win for sure! But then I tried to engage everyone afterward about a variety of topics, anything from what they were reading right now to if they preferred physical or electronic books. This was met with mixed results. A few people would react, a smaller handful would respond, and on a few posts, I was the only one to write anything. Things didn’t go the way I envisioned for my little group of nerds.
Random face-to-face discussions
If you know me, this should be a given. If I have to speak more than a couple sentences at a time, it’s bad news bears the whole way. Putting someone on the spot about anything without some form of preparation is a surefire way to anxiety attacks and mayhem. Or maybe that’s just me? Eh, anyway, going up to someone randomly, even if it is someone from the group you created, is not going to grant you discussion material. All that’s going to happen is some shrugs and awkward pauses. Plus, you know, the lack of the rest of the group. Approaching someone with as important a question as “Hey what are you reading right now tell me everything about it who’s your favorite character do you think there’s some deep underlying meaning in the novel you picked up?” isn’t necessarily fun for anyone involved.

In case of failure: Hide behind books Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

So where do we go from here? How can we have a book club when we’re not even discussing what we’re reading right now? Well, I have a few ideas on that matter, and I will keep you, my dear reader, updated with how those ideas work out. I would do the dramatic thing and keep you in the dark about the inner workings of my master plan, but that’d be a bitch thing to do, and let’s face it, I don’t want to forget. Here’s the rough draft:

Facebook Call-Outs
So how this will work (and I hope it works) is every week I’ll tag someone in a post with a question they have to answer in reference to a book they are reading right now. So say I tag my friend Tabitha (I don’t actually have a friend Tabitha but roll with me) and ask her who’s the saltiest she ever did see? Tabitha is reading the first Harry Potter book, so she responds, “That damn Snape dude is the absolute saltiest drop in the ocean. If you ingested him, you’d die of sodium poisoning.” And then she would go on to say what he’s doing in the book to make him seem so snarky and whether or not she agrees with the way he’s acting, you know, whatever she wants. I want a rant, though. More than a sentence. Give me and the rest of the group something to go off of. And then after they say their piece, the rest of the group can respond with questions or quips or stupid gifs and just all in all show our support for Tabitha’s thinking. We’re all reading, so let’s celebrate it! I’m going to try to put this into effect in June, so we’ll see how it goes.
Quarterly Get-Togethers
This one is a for sure thing that’s going to happen, and I have the first one already in the works. Once every few months or so (shooting for three here but life gets busy), I want us all to join up in person for a silly little project. For instance, this first one I have planned is a blind date with a book. I’m sure you’ve all seen them online or at your local bookstore, where someone wraps up a book and writes a few things about it on the cover and you choose it based on that, then take it home and read away. But for this one, there’s a catch. For this one, it’s going to be a blind Tinder date. Do you see where I’m going with this? So, you choose a book that you did not like for whatever reason (keeping politics out of the equation naturally) and wrap it up as pretty as you can make it. Then, you write that book’s best qualities by means of making the worst ones sound great. Bring it to the date, and let someone choose the book. I want to have everyone include a little written piece in the book detailing the exact moment they threw the book down or why they forced themselves to power through it to the bitter end. With the group, everyone can discuss—WITHOUT SPOILERS—what their problem was with the book, or what they really meant when they wrote up the book’s profile, something along those lines. I want real life discussion with real life booze. And it doesn’t end there. I want us all to talk about it while we’re reading it in the group. I want the woes of torturous literature. I want to suffer as a team, mostly because I think it’ll be funny, but also because there’s that slim chance that the book you hate will be the book someone else adores, and that’s magical.

This unorganized, unorthodox book club is definitely a work in progress. I’ll keep you all updated with what happens. May we stay afloat!!!

That being said, what about you? Have you ever been part of a book club before? How did you like it? Any suggestions for the likes of me??? I’d love to hear them, and I’m always open to new ideas. ❤

Tag: book club

Book Club Event: Take One

A Little Anarchy in the World of Books. And Clubs.