Reflections on joining a bookclub

So, I have this acquaintance. I think she’s exceptionally cool and interesting and I’d like to be friends with her. I’ve known her kind of for several years. Anyway, she has started this book club. I am not a book club person. I feel like overall if I wanted someone to tell me what to read that I’d at least take another literature class. Alas! She’s started a book club.

Thus far, we’ve read Le Rouge et Le Noir by Stendhal. I started it in French, but I got a late start and I read slowly in English (so painfully slow for a snail in French). After a few chapters I started using the kindle read aloud feature for the French and got through a little more. Most of my reading happens late at night, so this whole listening and following along to speed up the French reading and increase comprehension was nice, but not sustainable over the full 328 pages (actually, I think the French ed. was a bit longer).

So, I switched to English. I still had to skip several chapters at the end to get it read in time for the meeting today. I didn’t mind this because, frankly, I really didn’t like the book, at all. I was seriously reading this beast as a means to the end of making friends. LOL. And oh happy day, I had been told the wrong date by mistake. They had had their discussion of it yesterday. This is great because the worst part of this would have been discussing it without going on and on about how unlikeable every character in the book was. I get that it’s satire and that unlikeable characters is part of the point, but I need at least one likable character to enjoy a novel.

The good news is next time, they’re discussing Frankenstein. I’ve read it before and it’s only around 200 pages. I can read it very quickly in the 2 weeks between now and then, no problem and if I don’t finish, whatever, I know the book well enough to discuss it now. This is a relief.

The other wonderful thing about the experience of reading a French novel that I didn’t enjoy was that when I was reading it in French, I became aware of how much better my French has gotten over the last year and a half (I’ve been studying a bit). And it wasn’t the impossible task that reading French novels has been in the past (ridiculously slow, but not impossible). I’ve thus decided to be crazy.

In high school, on my own, I read the unabridged Les Mis. I picked it up for free at my high school library (they’d been donated several pallets of books from a local book project and didn’t have space for the vast majority, being a teacher’s kid, I got nearly first dibs). I carried that thing around with me everywhere for quite a long time. I read it in English. I plan to read it unabridged in French (that’s the crazy). I’ve downloaded the audible too because, while I don’t love audio books, it’ll help be get through that beast in less than a thousand years time.

And somehow, I’ll manage to reread Frankenstein too. Thank heavens the Les Mis. is not for the book club.