Anyways, me and Janey, over a quadruple vodka and coke at Tea Bar, thought “yeah! a book club!”. We’ll make funky posters and put them in Café 1001 and Bar Kick. And cool hipster types will come and we’ll drink wine and then maybe start our own club night. and at the club night we’ll make it look like a 90’s house party and put scarves over the lamps. And it’ll be ladies only.
We talked about it for quite a while but no one ever bothered to make the posters and it became another one of those things I was about to do (train for a half marathon, take French evening classes, do a dance course, buy a van and travel around the UK. If I did these things I might almost be an interesting person, but I don’t so I'm not).
So recently I did a women’s empowerment course at work. I think I've mentioned it on here before.
Day 1: turn to the lady next to you and say “you're amazing”.
Day 2: learn how to tell your boss that you work hard enough already and you want to start leaving on time and taking lunch breaks (you can see that this course was NOT aimed at me)
Day 3: list all the wonderful things about the lady next to you and give them to her on a post it note to keep
Day 4: learn to make time for ME and then tell the group what you’ve learned and everyone cry.
It was really quite awful. But I did start a diet as a result and I also finally got it together and started a book club. So I guess it worked. Although I don’t feel very empowered, I just feel thin.
So I decided to start a work book club rather than stick up posters in cool places. Cos then I can send invites out on outlook innit. and then we can go to the pub straight from work. Cos I hate it that some people finish work at 5 and some at 6 and some even at 7! I work in public sector so sometimes I finish at 4 and then I have to hang around for 3 hours waiting to meet up with people. That’s something I miss about not living in London actually. When I lived in Bristol you’d meet people for an evening out after having gone home and got changed and had some food. In London you have to meet people from work cos everyone’s all over the shop and it’s not worth it. but bits a small price to pay for living in the most exciting city on earth I guess.
Anyways. My book club.
Now I read a lot. I always have. As a kid I was a book worm. I made a little library in my bedroom which was granted just 2 bookshelves that I'd arranged to create a small room. I used to sit in there on a little stool, reading, wearing my holy communion veil on my head and pretending I was a nun.
My boyfriend’s brother had a much more impressive library. He actually had stamps and library cards and kids from the neighbourhood would come and take out the books.
So yeah, I've always been a big reader. But I'm not intellectual. I just like reading. Its up there with DVD boxsets for me. It’s not to get cultured or learn, it’s just cos I love the escapism.
Over the years since childhood I've been obsessed with the following:
Babysitters Club
Point Romance
Point Horror
Point (remember there were some that were neither horror nor romance but just a sort of sexy thriller?)
Sweet Valley High
Sweet Valley University
Maeve Binchy
John Grisham
Danielle Steel (in the end they're always about a girl who was raped by her dad)
The “Making Out” book series (anyone read these? About a group of teens living on an island called Chatham Island? There was an evil one called Lara)
Shopoholic Book series
Margaret Atwood
I love chick lit and I love main stream commercial stuff. I like epic novels as long as they're not too hard. I mainly judge books by their covers.
Now the problem with a book club is you can't please everyone. We haven’t found our rhythm yet. I think it’ll take a awhile and I think in that we’ll lose a lot of members and gain new ones along the way. Cos right now everyone’s very polite. People order cokes not wine and we keep reading books that everyone hates. For it to work, we have to all like the same books. You want to read stuff you wouldn’t have thought of before but in the group right now, I think half like trash and half like proper intelligent stuff. Classics. Philosophy. I'm fine with that sometimes but I like to read a good book that I can slag off and love at the same time.
So in the meantime, I've set up another book club. There are 3 members including me and our first book is “Girl with a one track mind”. It’s all about sex and when we meet up we won’t talk about it and just get drunk.
It may have taken me 4 years but when I do something I don’t do it by half. That’s why I'm such a heavy drinker I suppose.
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