Some, but less so than in the heyday.

There’s often Star Wars ones, I know (which, I mean, with how much SW merch there is, no one should be surprised at that).

It wasn’t specifically for me, so it only sort of applies.

My local book club does a holiday party for our December gathering every year. We do a fun quiz on book-club related things and do a “steal the gift” exchange but with wrapped books.

I fully admit I hate the “steal the gift” things anyway, I don’t like stealing the gifts, I always get skunked even when the stakes are low, and I just never enjoy it. But I participate every year because it’s simple and would be weird to be the only one not participating.

It can be any book- a used one you found, one from your shelf, one you hated, etc. I DESPISE the “one you hated” part. Why would you do that to us? We’re supposed to be at least book club friends if not actual friends outside of this club.

So one year I got One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus, one we’d read in the group.
The book we all collectively despised. The one we said we were against book burning, but might just have to make an exception for.

But it was soooo freaking “funny” to put that in the blind grab bag for the steal the gift exchange.

I’m not freaking laughing.

Of course no one stole that piece of garbage from me, so I was stuck with it for the entire game and didn’t get any second chances.

That was the year I stopped trying at all when selecting my book for the exchange. Previously I’d put a lot o f thought into it and had my selection get lukewarm at best reactions, but this was the icing on the cake, I was done. And it’s coming up again in a few weeks. I half put thought in to mine. A book in my give away pile already, but it’s a collection of Victorian ghost stories. The Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, so it fits. But they’re all hit or miss on old stuff, so I fully expect it to be a lukewarm at best reception. Oh well. I liked it, just won’t read it again, hence why it’s in my giveaway pile. It’s going to be out of my house, which is the goal, regardless, so I’m satisfied.

They’re wildly inconsistent. But there are some true gems out there.

I unfortunately read the whole thing, you missed nothing. It was awful.

A couple pages in. It was An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks. I nearly rage-quit on page one, but I forced myself to keep going for a bit longer. Very quickly I realized it wasn’t going to get better and I should have probably just rage-quit on that first page.

What specifically did it (the first time) was a paragraph about people who did bad things, but what if they did those bad things because of -insert stupid reason here-. The one that did it specifically was basically “maybe the man cheated on his wife because she was frigid and didn’t put out”.

Not only were the other excuses poor and failed to apply any personal responsibility for one’s actions, but that one? Ugh, made my skin crawl.

It was a selection in my local book club, and, surprisingly, that didn’t bug anyone else (all women). Yet I can guarantee you if that was real life e or even another book they didn’t love otherwise, it would have been a big deal. The inconsistently of that situation also bothered me, but that has nothing to do with the book.

I finished it. You didn’t miss anything. I’m of the minority but I thought it was terrible.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It’s my favorite book and I’ve never met anyone else who has said it was their favorite, or even top ten, so just so we can chat about that alone even it nothing else comes of it.

But I also just saw The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, and also yes, hell yes. Especially Far Side. If you have that sense o f humor, we’ll get along well. A solid foundation.

Only if I liked the first book enough to continue.

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus - We read this in my local book club and all shredded it. Written by a man who’s maybe never met a woman let alone been intimate with one, and wrote a story from a woman’s point of view. We don’t support burning books, but we strongly considered making an exception for this one.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - I’ve mostly pushed it from my mind, but I still shutter when I think about it.

Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks - It’s so blatantly fake and propaganda, not even done well.

Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - Pretentious, obnoxious, stupid.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - Another I’ve mostly pushed from my mind but ugh, I hated every second. I think I finished out of spite.

Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Bradshares - You had a perfectly good ending with book four and you had to go and cash-grab and ruin it all and ruin the characters you’d done so well with.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh - Another local book club read, another we don’t support burning books but we might make an exception for this one. The main character was insufferable, among other things.

Home Front by Kristin Hannah - Another local book club read, the second and final strike for the author. She’s banned from further selections in our book club (since that’s been misread in the past- we don’t care what you read outside of book club, but this author will never be a book club selection again). The first offense was Night Road. Never again.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Another local book club read, mixed reviews with no one loving it but not all hating or disliking it. Main was insufferable, made the same stupid decisions over and over again. Needed to be bailed out constantly and never learned. All major pet peeves of mine.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman - Another local book club read, mostly positive responses except for me (not uncommon). The main character was god awful. You don’t get to be a complete asshole and treat others poorly and look down on them because you have issues. Also I saw the ending coming a mile away.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child “by” J.K. Rowling - This one speaks for itself.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders - No, I didn’t just “not get it.” It was pretentious and awful and anyone who tells me “I just didn’t get it.” probably didn’t get it themselves but wants to sound smart and elevated. That argument is such BS anyway.

And since there’s a bunch of “local book club picks” on here- why do I keep going back? Well, I’ve been in it for over ten years now. I like most of the members, friends with a few outside of it, and I read books I’d never pick up otherwise.

I’ll gladly take ten or more 1 star or 0 star reads to find that one 5 star read I’d never have found otherwise. I’ve found a couple of amazing books, including my second favorite book ever, Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, which I wouldn’t have likely found without it being a book club pick.

Even if we don’t like the books, or we’re mixed, our conversations are almost always great and the discussions are interesting and intellectual. We can respect differing opinions and see why someone liked i t or someone didn’t, even if we don’t think the same, because they’ve spoken up and said why.

I’ve heard of five of these.

The Wager was really good. I also really liked Whalefall.

The other three I haven’t read, just heard of them.

But I’m guessing this is another Popular = Therefore we put it on these lists kind of list…

I love JP, too! Book and movie. Saw the movie first, and I was only seven, but shortly after I discovered it at the library and was just so excited to have more of it. I’m of the opinion the book and movie are equals. Different, but books are different than movies, it’s just the nature of the different mediums. Scott Brick does the audiobook version and it’s very good.

Timeline and Dragon Teeth are other favorites of his. Lost World was decent. Eaters of the Dead was very different but I did like it. I hated Sphere, but it’s super popular, so maybe you’ll like it too.

Just like the rest of Goodreads, popularity contest.

It’s pulling from it’s own data and the fairly small number of people who nominate books of all the users on Goodreads. Then the also proporatiteley small number of people who vote versus just have Goodreads accounts.

I often find many of my 1-star reads in the running or even the winners.

So it basically means nothing to me. Kind of like how the NYT Bestseller list is usually my list to avoid.

Also I agree it’s far less well-rounded to dump those categories. Kids may not be the audience voting, but parents are on there.

Fiction: From Below by Darcy Coates. The thing was like 400 pages and didn’t need to be more than 300 if I’m being generous. As one reviewer said, “There’s silt. We get it.” The dual storylines jumped all over the place and though they were obviously connected (ship that will sink in the past to divers in the present exploring said wreck), they couldn’t have felt more disconnected or unrelated. Characters were utterly stupid yet supposed to be highly trained in their fields.

But my biggest pet peeve that lands it here: complete lack of research and also editor failures. I don’t expect an author to become an expert on a subject to write a novel about characters who are involved in that subject, but if get facts wrong that are a basic google search aaway, you have failed.

I’m a scuba diver, I’ve been diving for twenty six years. No one calls their BC by it’s full name, it’s a BC. BCD stands for Buoyancy Compensator Device. Beyond your instructor in your preliminary certification classes saying once “this is the Buoyancy Compensator Device, BCD, which everyone calls their BC…” that full term is never used. A veteran diver, about three hundred pages into the book, calls it a Buoyancy Compensator.

Then at first I was impressed because the first time it was mentioned, the tank was referred to as “air.” Which is what we call it, because that’s what it is.

Every time after that i was “Oxygen.” It’s not oxygen. Oxygen refers to 100% oxygen, as in a medical setting. We do not take down tanks of 100% oxygen on our dives. That would be incredibly stupid, as oxygen becomes toxic at depth, as well as other factors and it’s not even what we breathe on land, why would we take it down underwater with us? The air we breathe on land just walking around is not 100% oxygen, it’s roughly 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and trace amounts of other gases. We call it air, because that’s what it is.

(There are Nitrox blends, which is an enriched air, so it contains approximately 32% or 36% oxygen, and less nitrogen, but that’s a specialty mix and another story; the tl:dr version is you take in less nitrogen, therefore longer dive times and shorter surface einverevalas are required. But you don’t go as deep because more oxygen = potential for oxygen toxicity at depth). In fact when you do incredibly deep dives, the technical stuff beyond recreational limits, the Navy-level stuff, some oil-rig stuff, basically the pro-level stuff, you’re actually breathing a tri-mix, a common blend being 21% oxygen, 35% helium and 44% nitrogen; oxygen is higher than normal air but it’s tempered and balanced by the helium and nitrogen mixes). None of these apply to this book, I just find them fascinating and all this info is available on Wikipedia.

Those all that personally just ticked me off because I know better being a scuba diver, but also knowing that it was literally a simple google search and a Wikipedia article away.

Non-Fiction: Rabid by Bill Wasik. The guy managed to make RABIES, which is inherently terrifying and interesting with it’s 99% mortality rate boring. Also the book was 90% filler, the padding level was just obscene. He quoted The Office at one point. His tone was awful and annoying and he played very fast and loose with facts.

A portion of a review I found puts it perfectly: “One of those pop-science books that falls so short in simple factual accuracy sometimes that I’d call it pseudo-pop science, and makes me sceptical of any other facts the writer presents.”

Honorable Mention (also fiction): All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slatter. It’s poorly written, with flat, boring characters and an ill-defined world, but that’s pretty run the mill bad. It’s an honorable mention for that plus the original complete bait and switch and completely misrepresented in its original advertising, which I now note has been changed and the blurb on Goodreads is far closer to what it actually was.

The first and third books are the best. Two was fine but kind of dark. They go downhill after that.

I still love Odd as a character and read the whole series, but I only read the first and third.

And now that I realized you jumped into the seventh book in the series first… yeah, read the first one. Deeply Odd is not representative of the earlier books at all. Also jumping into that late in just about any series is setting yourself up for failure.

I’m also a very fast reader. I’ll have usually finished my local book club books (we pick two; read one, read both, read neither, our choice). But I wait until book club to talk about it, when everyone else is also talking about it. That’s what the book club meeting is for. Everybody in the group knows I’m a super fast reader, I’ve been in this group for years and we all acknowledge we read at different speeds (some are self-proclaimed slow readers).

It sounds like it should just be made that the group chat isn’t for that kind of thing, and it’s book club policy to discuss the books with the group at the meetings. If any individuals want to get together on their own and talk before, cool, but not in the group chat.

Maybe she doesn’t realize what she’s doing, maybe she does. But clearly she’ll keep doing it until someone says “hey let’s not talk about it until the meeting so we all have a chance to get it and read it.”