The Book Club

In my feverish attempt at making my life in Korea actually mean something, damn it, I joined a bunch of clubs and activities a few weeks ago. This included joining a book club.

Now, the very idea of a book club is something that is extremely appealing to me. It's the picture of smarty-arty pants sitting around in a well lit room sipping tea and discussing what really matters. It's quaint. It's cute. It's novel.

Of course, my romanticized idea of book clubs are anything but the real deal. Instead of tea, we are downing beers and wine. Instead of a cozy cottage somewhere, we are in a dingy bar/restaurant with dim lighting and a bathroom with a door nearly off its hinge. Instead of the orderly discussions where we all nod our heads in deep thought after someone has (yet again!) said something really profound about the book, we talk over each other, debate heavily, and disagree as readily as we agree.

Yesterday was the first meeting of our book club and I'm not sure if it was because it was the first meeting or what, but I felt like everyone was going balls-to-the-wall trying to assert their dominance, or brillance, or opinion, on the rest of the group. Like any moment we would all just whip it out and measure.

I include myself in the battle for supremacy because, please, like I was going to let someone misinterpret me, my opinions, or to, God help them, talk over me, or worse, not let me have a voice. I came into the meeting with my usual quiet reserve, prepared to get my tea sipping on, but left the meeting with guns blazing.

The reason why I decided to join a book club, I mean, besides the fact that I can say quite assuredly with noise turned straight up that "why yes, I am in a book club thank you very much," is that I missed the sort of discussion usually found around any seminar table in any university. I missed getting into the nitty gritty of pulling books apart only to put them back together again. I missed reading books that I myself wouldn't necessarily pick out for myself, but challege me and actually, actually, make me think.

That is not to say that I haven't been reading here in Korea. But I don't think re-reading Pride & Prejudice or the first of the Harry Potter series constitutes as a challenge. The former because I've read it a million times that whole pages are engrained in my memory, the latter because it was more entertaining than not.

In sum, I felt like I was becoming, for lack of a better expression, stupider. Like my synapses had stopped firing. I could actually feel the loss of my usual reading load because it effected not only my speech, but my writing.

Which is why I'm really glad I joined the book club. Because I always feel at my absolute best when I have my intellectual guns blazing.