Random authorial musings
Over at the Insider’s Blog on the Random House Canada BookLounge website, Todd Babiak uses an author guest post to talk about book clubs – or, more specifically, his awkwardness at book club meetings. Since publishing The Garneau Block, he’s been invited to appear at several gatherings, he says, and he always overdoes it when it comes to tie-wearing, boob-staring, and hummus-eating.
I always wear a suit, which is always too much. The host invites me in and I sit down in a comfortable chesterfield and smile. As we introduce ourselves, I investigate, by the tone and tenor of their voices, whether any of them disliked the novel. Women in book clubs always seem to be attractive and intelligent, so I worry about being caught checking them out (after two glasses of wine, my gaze tends to linger). And, of course, I worry about eating too much hummus and horrifying these lovely readers with my garlic breath.
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) has also blogged at the Random House site, and his entries range from the morbidly amusing (increasingly violent sketches he has drawn to accompany his signature in books, and the follow-up entry about how Brits and Canadians respond to his sense of humour versus how Americans respond) to the annoyingly whiny (publicity is hard and journalists are manipulative hacks).
“One should never devour a good book alone” is something my mother has said to me. She likened it to rapidly stuffing your face at a dinner party whilst ignoring all the other guests. Personally I hate book clubs. I prefer to keep my opinion of what I have read to myself, sharing it with others or having to hear what their thoughts were on the material (over warm, crusty cheese and bad wine) always taints my own mental interpretation of the book.
I find it’s like having someone throw their bad wine on your mental canvas, a canvas that you’ve meticulously created and nurtured from page one to novel end. And it can never be white wine. It’s always red. And it always stains.
Thus I am a closet reader. I read at home, in bed, where I can drink my own wine selection and the cheese is never allowed to crust.
And I don’t share.