Hello, my name is Bonnie and I am a Reader.

Not just a reader. I am a capital ‘R’ Reader. A Nerdy-Nerd Reader.

It is with reluctance that I admit that I prefer reading to, umm, pretty much anything. Right beside all the pairs of reading glasses that I referred to in my last blog post, you will probably find a book: on my desk, in my purse, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on my bedside table and in the car. While waiting in line at Costco (buying more reading glasses, hello?), I will pull out my purse-book and read. In fact, in the middle of a particularly good book, I will pick the long lineup.

My reluctance at admitting this is because, well… people. People don’t like to hear that they’re not as exciting to hang out with as the latest Cormoran Strike (and Robin!) installment from Kenneth Galbraith (a.k.a. J. K. Rowling). Or whatever Anne Lamott, A. J. Jacobs or Liane Moriarty has cooked up lately. Or whatever C. S. Lewis, A. A. Milne or Agatha Christie cooked up a long time ago.

An exception might extend to hanging out with other people who supposedly love books, but that doesn’t always go well (as you can find out here.)

Given this preamble, you might think that I was a reading prodigy – someone who first read at the ripe old age of maybe…four. But no, you would be wrong.

Although I grew up in a Reading Family, I was slow to the uptake. I can remember my eleven-year-old sister lording it over five-year-old me that I did not know how to read yet. And me, baffled that I had been denied the keys to the Reading Kingdom. After all I had been a dedicated fan of Sesame Street: it was a large part of my pre-school education.

Here’s a painful memory: in Grade One, our class was separated into two reading groups. If you were ahead of the curve, you joined the Bunny circle. If you weren’t, you were relegated to the Brownies.

Three things bothered me about this.

First: Bunnies were my favorite. I mean, seriously, my name? Bonnie? Pretty close. I had a bunny collection. I was quiet and nervous. I felt denied from something that I truly related to.

Second: What sort of sense did Brownies and Bunnies make, except starting with the same letter? I could have more easily accepted Brownies and Greenies. Or Bunnies and Turtles. But maybe that’s just me.

Lastly, my own favorite Auntie Evelyn was a substitute teacher at the time. So, there was a first-hand family witness to my Brownie-ness.

I don’t remember if I had an aha! moment – like when it all clicked for me. But eventually I could read and our class became One Big Happy Reading Circle. By Grade Two I was a Confident Reader and loved to be called on to read aloud in class. Until that one day after the day I had stayed home sick when the whole class learned about Silent Letters. (Silent Letters are jerks.) How was I supposed to know it wasn’t an IZLAND? IS? LAND? I can’t even.

You can be sure I never forgot that lesson. In fact, I have now become a Corrector. As in, umm, you’re pronouncing it wrong. Okay, maybe I just say it to you in my head. Unless you’re my husband. (Sorry, Rick.)

Given, these early episodes of Reading Trauma, you might guess I was ready to throw in the Proverbial Reading Towel. Except that trauma aside, there were Reading Mysteries that were unveiled that were just way too interesting to me. And not just the literal mysteries of Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden or Encyclopedia Brown. Reading held the key to learning about Ancient Greece (a favorite era), New York City (where it seemed all Scholastic books were set) and Lions and Scarecrows and Wizards of Oz.

And so books continue to intrigue, inform and entertain me. My bunny collection might be long gone. But my book collection is going strong.

I’ve always wanted to join a book club.

I think.

As a (capital R) Reader, I have naturally thought that reading the same books and discussing them with other people would be edifying, illuminating and fun. Ergo, my process led me to believe that joining a book club would also be fun. Instead, my experience has been well, kinda not.

I have several friends with whom I love to informally talk about the books we read and there have been occasions when I have actually discussed some books in detail via email with a group of friends. But the book club I was seeking was the kind you see on movies (well, maybe without the Fifty Shades theme of the movie Book Club). You know, the ones with glamorous living rooms, appetizers that didn’t come from Costco, brutally honest life-long friends and oh, of course, wine.

A couple of years ago, my local library switched to a self-serve system to pick up borrower holds. It was then I noticed the alluring collections of all the same books held there for book clubs in my small town. Could it be possible to infiltrate one of these already existing groups, I asked? No, I was told. The memberships were closed.

Closed? I was crushed. I just knew I could be a valuable member. I wouldn’t talk too much. I wouldn’t stay too long. I wouldn’t bring any appies from Costco. Or wine with a flip-top. I would probably actually read the books. I could do this thing.

Unfortunately, our library’s only power lay in ordering the books for the clubs, not coercing them to take new members. After all, my library card cost the same as the next guy’s. I had no special library mafia privileges.

Last year, I noticed an ad for an open book club in a neighboring town that met at the museum. The selections listed for the next few months were great – they were all already on my TBR list. The club was meeting soon, so I actually bought the book and read it quickly and on the day of , arrived early to meet my new life-long friends.

Oh, I’m sorry, I was told. Book Club has moved its meeting place to a restaurant where they’re holding an open-house wine-tasting tonight.

Wait, what? Obviously, I had miscalculated just how important the wine factor was in order to facilitate literary discussion. But as much as I really had liked the book I had read and wanted to discuss it, the introverted-me that was okay with meeting strangers (that could become life-long friends) at a museum was definitely not okay at venturing into an unknown crowd of wine-testers. So I went home.

A few months ago, my local library responded to the pleas (not just from me) to facilitate a new book club, aptly called The Book Club at the Library. I went to the inaugural meeting and was cheered to see other women around the table. Oh, and one teenage boy.

We met again the next week, with instructions to bring some suggestions for books to read together in the next few months. Our librarian would help us by checking availability on the system. I was pumped. The book suggestions made by the other women were great. I felt like I was among kindred book spirits.

Except. Our lone male, unlike Greg from The Jane Austen Book Club, was not interested in reading about 18th century English courtship. Or even about suburban-housewives-on-the-prairie-going-through-menopause-or-divorce-or-other-stuff-like-that. He wanted to read about dragons.

Now I’m all for expanding my reading horizons and broadening my literary landscapes. But I wasn’t prepared for dragons. Yes, I’ve read (and loved) Harry Potter and The Hobbit and The Paper Bag Princess, but I wasn’t sure if I was up for a 500-page tome about morphing dragons disguised as humans living among us and the people who are trained to hunt and destroy them. With guns and grenades and stuff. (No broomsticks or eagles in sight.) And wouldn’t you know it: plenty of copies were available and this would be our first month’s assignment.

Sigh.

I read the damn book. I dragged myself through it. I kept waiting for it to captivate me and turn into a page turner. Or at least surprise me with a plot twist I didn’t see coming. (And I am highly unimaginative when it comes to guessing what happens next in 99.9% of the books I read.)

I didn’t want to be a book snob. So I used Post-it flags to note “interesting” parts of the story so I could at least contribute to the “lively” discussion I was hoping would ensue. But then, on that first day of The Book Club at the Library, only three of us showed up: me, the teenage boy and another woman who could only stay for 30 of the 120 minutes allotted for discussion of the book.

I think the problem was that the library didn’t serve wine.

Now, I’m not saying that there was something wrong with The Book That Shall Remain Unnamed. The young man obviously loved it because he was already on the third book of the series it was a part of. It just wasn’t what I want to read (and talk about) right now. Or ever.

The next month, I dutifully read and showed up for the meeting but this time, it was only me and the teenage boy who made it. Okay, I thought. This is NOT what I signed up for. And while I really wanted to talk about A Man Called Ove, my teenage companion had nothing to say.

The next month’s selection was…hard. And it was summer. The excuses abounded. So I didn’t go back. Which led me to ask the question, what exactly am I looking for?

Well, like-mindedness, for sure. And good books, which to me are the kind that I like to read. There’s only so many reading minutes, hours, days I have left. Perhaps I shouldn’t let someone else tell me what to read (if I’m not paying them tuition and expecting a certificate afterwards.)

And maybe I’ve figured out why there’s always wine at book clubs. Because book clubs should be about sharing what you’re eating and what you’re reading with friends around the table. I already have friends that I do that with. Maybe it doesn’t look the way it does in the movies, but maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Or maybe if I could handle more than one glass of wine, I could also handle dragons.

My husband and I looked at a lot of condos last spring in search of the perfect one to invest in. One of the fun parts of this is getting to peek in on other people’s homes, on their lives really. When house shopping, you’re allowed to open closets and vanity drawers, notice where they have shoved the messes and if, perhaps, they don’t have any at all. Inevitably, I’m always drawn to the bookshelves.

What do other people read? I make assessments as I go. This one only has coffee table books. Verdict: not a reader at all, just likes the pictures. This one has shelves full of DVDs and (gasp!) VHS tapes! But even more befuddling, not a TV, or a VCR for that matter, in sight. Ummm, what? Another office held binders upon binders full of papers destined for the recycle bin, hearkening to a professional life and a time before documents were saved in the Cloud.

And then there are the ones with the copious collections of every book they ever purchased and hopefully read, just sitting there, pregnant again on the shelf. The wide array is just a trophy case to me, a testament yes, of great swathes of literature (or not) combed through over many years. But it doesn’t tell me much except how important you feel it is to keep so many books.

Most intriguing to me are the homes with neatened piles of books on the nightstand, all with bookmarks halfway in all of them, some fiction, some not, a testimony to a voracious and varied reading and learning life. All around the house there are small dog-eared collections tucked carefully away in closets and piled on the toilet tank or in baskets in the living room. A hasty retreat has left a Robert Galbraith face down on the top shelf of the coat closet and now they can’t read the next excellent chapter at the coffeeshop they’ve gone to because dammit, they forgot their book.

It makes me sad when I enter a home and see…no books. I know some people just aren’t readers, I get it and…maybe. Whatever. And I know that some have forsaken the physical bookshelf for their Kindles full of fascinating titles, that they keep private and easy to transport. Or they frugally and responsibly read all their books from the library. But I like the personality that a curated, actual bookshelf displays. Sure, it’s nice to make another notch in the reading belt and wedge the latest conquest in between others of the same height and width. I prefer to add to my ‘Books Read’ list in my current journal and if I decide I will most definitely never read it again (because really, who has time to re-read mediocre or unsatisfying books?), I will add it to my give away box or return it to the library.

My own bookshelves hold only my favorites, the ones I hope to get back to someday or that I’ve marked up and dog-eared so that I can easily return to a favorite place. This has surprised some people who know how much I read and how I prefer physical books to their digital and audio counterparts. Because while I have quite a few books, I have given away probably hundreds more, most purchased for only a dollar or two at the local thrift store. Either they or the library book sale will get my cast-offs so it’s not wasteful on my part, it’s a donation. But I would hope that looking at my shelves you would get a sense of this girl who loves YA and historical novels, art and writing books, memoirs and spiritual guides, all grouped together meaningfully, hoping to impart some creativity in their arrangement in addition to the art in their pages.