Austenland

So... Book clubs. Do we automatically have to join at 45 or can we opt out?

One thing I can appreciate is a secular gathering of adults who talk about current events or topics other than imaginary friends. This kind of bonding ritual or modern Socratic learning is worthwhile and for sure a noble effort. I tip my hat to those dedicated fellow literature appreciators.

On the other hand, I HATED book reports when I was a kid. I remember despising so many books because I just didn't feel driven to read it and summarize it for others. Mostly I didn't care for extensive exposition. I was more of a facts and figures kid. Trivia focused, Jeopardy if you will. Q&A was my jam, math too. Puzzles were great, including those little seek-and-finds or scrabble style quick answers, spelling bees. Those were great. I'm pretty sure this is now called ADHD, but I digress. It wasn't that I couldn't understand broad themes or work through intense dialogue, I just couldn't bring myself to care most of the time. UNLESS, I focused on stories handed down from my siblings. Anne of Green Gables and those series, Sherlock Holmes, Little Women, and later Jane Austen. I guess you can say I'm IN for the penny novel. I also developed a kinship with Shakespeare, and fellow philosophers such as Nietzsche, Sartre and Kant. But if you try to make me read "Where the Red Fern Grows" I will throw it down and spit in your face. Does it have childhood trauma and friendship with animals? Sure. Could it be done in @ 100 less pages? Absolutely. I guess, in the end, I just don't want to get into a fist fight over the color of the scenery or the fact that an antagonist is often more complex than the author has written and we don't know their back story...

Instead of listening to someone analyze a book I most likely didn't read, I prefer the art of the table read. Taking a play, or a great work of dialogue, assigning characters and walking through like a script... Projecting your pain into someone else. BEING Darcy instead of reading about some prick and his misogyny from a century or two ago, that's more of a challenge. You're testing your acquaintances, making them put the tomes to work and stumble through a scene. Embodying characters, though I took my acting cap off many moons ago, I feel like I still have the understanding and depth of stagecraft in me. I just use it in different ways now, like pretending to give a shit about budgets and memorizing useless phrases and corporate jargon. Seriously, made up shit phrases like billable utilization and acronyms like EBITDA, who gives two yanks about any of it. But a soliloquy like when Anne is riding with Matthew and he's falling in parental love with this pipsqueak child who needs a home to fill with her big thoughts. That'll get your heart and your artistic wheels turning.

Art and literature can be appreciated, but participation is a gift. So if and when I decide to fall in line and join your book club, be ready to dig deep and challenge your idea of the task. But also, make sure there's wine and charcuterie, but mostly wine. LOTS and lots of wine.

-Til the last drop, N.