I love books. I hate book lovers.

Surviving being the quietest man at the book club

#13. Book Club

I love books, but I hate people who love books.

Every time I’m foolhardy enough to venture into a Waterstones, I can’t help but feel a little out of place. Window displays hector and lecture with titles like Why Men Are Awful (Vol. XII) and Feel Bad About Your White Skin, Coloniser!

Look, you HAVE to read the uncut version of this article. It’s much, much better. It’s packed full of stuff that would probably ruin my life if it weren’t hidden behind a paywall.

So you can understand why I hesitated as I tiptoed up the winding stairs of the picturesque St Albans bookshop and into my first ever book club. I was there to discuss the pick of the month, Lessons in Chemistry. The book’s description on Amazon starts, ‘Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.’

I would be intrigued to meet this chemist, this one who doesn’t subscribe to the law of normal distribution.

Having read (i.e., skimmed) the book (i.e., the first third of the book), I came armed with many such pedantic quips and logical fallacies, which I was sure the group would receive well.

The setting was a twisted old oaken attic, shelves groaning with books from poppy paperbacks to leather-bound classics, and the menagerie was entire female. The April sun crept through thick panes of molten glass, gently warming the women’s faces as I entered. Two old ladies shuffled up on a pew so I could sit down. The whole group cooed and fussed, making sure I had a cushion, and a cup of tea. I took my place amongst the dusty old hardbacks (and the books) and got ready for some hardcore book clubbin’.

First order of the day: books we had been reading recently. I opted not to share how much I’d been enjoying some classic James Bond – and how I like the way he shoots his gun at baddies and kisses those nice ladies and whatnot.

Turning to Lessons in Chemistry, the group neglected to discuss the finer points of the plot and symbolism (perhaps because there wasn’t any), and more about how awful men are.

I drew into myself, like a snail that’s been poked with a stick. If I kept still, they might forget I was there, like a tyrannosaurus rex I think. Head down, brow pinched, eyes flicking furtively from left to right through narrowed slits, I repeated a mantra in my head as if it were a protective spell. ‘Frown, look thoughtful and nod. Frown, look thoughtful and nod…’

I lifted my head occasionally when some of the women seemed to share my reservations about the book. One complained, for example, that the characters were two-dimensional. Yet the group at large wasn’t having it: every fault was in fact just proof of the book’s genius. You see, the characters were meant to be two-dimensional – they were deliberately written as caricatures to make an incisive political comment, or something.

My disappointment must have shown on my face, because a bubbly older woman, hair in a bun, asked me as the only man in the group what I thought about the book. Everyone’s faces turned expectantly to me, wide eyes fixed like a parliament of owls watching a field mouse.

What did I think? What did I think?

I thought this book was everything that’s wrong with the world today. It should have been called Lessons in Victim Mentality. No wonder it was a bestseller. The main character was perfect in every way, while the world around her was irredeemably flawed. She doesn’t grow as a character - perhaps because she doesn’t have one to begin with. Having bad things happen to you is not a personality trait. There is, ironically, no chemistry in the book in either the literal or metaphorical sense, and the book’s biggest crime is that it is excruciatingly dull. It does not, as a reviewer on the front cover promises, spark joy on every page. It was exhausting, mean-spirited and trite, one of the worst books I have ever read, and I would sooner spend eternity watching Michael Macintyre’s stand-up with hot needles pushed under my fingernails than pick it back up again, ever.

I said, ‘It wasn’t my cup of tea.’

I’ve always known I was introverted but I never realised just how bad it was until I was the quietest person at a book club.

But maybe if I keep going back, it could be a good way to make friends.

The book for next month, hooted the organiser as we shuffled towards the exit, was to be Our Wives Under the Sea - written about a woman who returns to her wife transformed by a deep-sea voyage, the author wanted to explore the ‘crossover with queer women’s fiction and the sea.’

What about you - what’s your guilty pleasure book?

Fifty Shades of Grey? Harry Potter? Mein Kampf? Let me know in the comments.