I’m actually a day late, but better late than never, right? This week’s Booking Through Thursday question is a combination of two suggestions from two different BTT followers and asks:

Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (ot, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion?

Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?

Truth be told, I’ve never really understood the appeal of book clubs. They feel too much like being back in school and stuck trudging along with the rest of the class. That’s mean, I know, but it’s how I feel. If I’ve found a book I like, I’ll pick it up, read it and be done with it. Here lately that hasn’t been the case, but believe me, that’s the exception not the norm. In school in always killed me that a book that would, at best, take me a handful of days to get through took weeks, sometimes a month or so, for the class to get through. That’s generally why I was in advanced reading and English programs – I hated being held behind.

That still holds true to this day. If a book is good, I’ll read it through. If it doesn’t hold my attention then I will rarely force myself to finish it. The exception being if it’s one that is just so bad it’s hysterical.

I have joined a few book clubs over time, but for the most part I found myself disappointed. I joined a fantasy and science fiction one and found myself stuck reading poorly written drivel that seemed to be packed with every cliche imaginable. The problem I found with that group was that they liked the very stereotypical Fantasy and Science Fiction books where as I tend to prefer books that incorporate many genres. Learning from that experiance I didn’t even bother with trying to join a romance book club or the horror one.

I did find myself joining a general book club though, again big disapointment. Lots of books that were in no way interesting to me, but I was normally severely outvoted. When it came time to read books I found myself rushing through certain ones that held no interest to me so that I could be done with them, only to find everyone else just crawling along at a snail’s pace.

And let’s not even get into all the religious, especially Christian, junk I had to read. *twitches* Seeing as how I don’t believe in or follow that stuff it was real mind numbing torture for me to read multiple books from that genre over and over. Needless to say, I happily cut ties there.

Right now the only “book clubs” I am a member of are book clubs where you can buy books at discounted prices. I was a member of an online one once at the old TSB boards, but when those boards went down so did it. Too bad too, because it was enjoyable while it lasted. Perhaps that one was more enjoyable because there was more diversity? Perhaps I can start one up at the new Vertigo. Something to consider for sure.

The book clubs that I was a member of generally had a clique mentality. The one I stayed with the longest, about five months, passed around forms at every meeting. You could write down your suggestions, authors or titles, and the leaders of the club would pick out the ones that seemed most popular and hold them for a vote-slash-discussion. So say you nominated a vampire novel and three other members choose vampire novels as well, but not the one you picked. There would be a group discussion on that genre, some titles would be brought up and discussed and then a vote cast.

It seemed good on paper, but in reality the members who were good friends and held officer positions tended to dominate the nomination and discussions. Hence how I got stuck with all the Christian lit books.

Did I feel obliged to read books because of the club? Yeah, tons of books were read that I would never have touched and there were only a few gems amongst them too.