Forget book reviews. I think book clubs should be reviewed. My office book club has terrible taste (and actually has now given up reading altogether). Firstly we read 'the man in the tall castle' which has a fascinating premise but is written so badly that my school-day English teachers would weep. The club couldn't understand what was going on with the plot and largely gave up. Amazon are now turning it into a film. That'll be interesting. The next one (the purple hibiscus) the group found to be 'gritty' and 'touching' but I found it boring. When I eventually got to chose a book it was 'Scoop' by Evelyn Waugh. Amazing. Best book I've read in a really long time. It had me laughing all the way through. It was like Oscar Wilde had a grandson (named E.Waugh) who was also into writing (I realise that for practical reasons Wilde probably didn't have a grandson). No one else liked Scoop. No one even read it, they couldn't get past the first few chapters.
Scoop had actually been a second choice. I had wanted to selecting 'Closing Time', which is the follow up to Catch 22, my all time favourite book. Unfortunately for me the club collectively hates Catch 22, so the sequel was off the cards.
I can't help but feel that there's a niche for a kind of OkCupid for book clubs. In this way I can find a bunch that like books that are generally recognised to be good and they can recruit someone in my place who enjoys slow moving grit.
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