Looking Lit
Trying to find IRL friends through book clubs.
In an effort to expand our San Diego based social circle, we’ve taken to book clubs as our answer. Since February, I’ve been going online looking for local book clubs to join. We co-started a bookstagram for this purpose @somewhatnovel, and I’ve been using Threads to respond and reach out to people. Most of it has been totally unsuccessful actually, because many book clubs don’t take men--which is pretty normal. However, I did find a few that looked promising but ultimately online was not the answer.
Digression: Generally speaking, I am happy to have interest-only friends. As outlined in my old Friendship Archetype Hierarchy, that’s like most of my friends actually. Do enough stuff and you’ll gather a friend or two along the way. I had assumed that shared activities turn into friendships and so on.
However, certain activities are apparently not always conducive to making friends. For example, working out! Now that I’m a veteran of fitness classes and the gym, I understand that you aren’t really there to talk to anyone. You do your business and then get out, waving hello to some regulars maybe but never really crossing the line to more.
The classes I’ve always taken have been dance, language, creative, or something along those lines, and that leads toward hanging out away from the actual activity. Maybe doing fitness stuff like Tough Mudder or something with a pre-designated group creates the friendship thing but so far just working out certainly doesn’t!
Anyway, back to books. We’re on the lookout for book and book activities all the time now, and really what we are looking for is people who wanna be social and chat and talk about things. That could be just meeting up with strangers for coffee or drinks, but both of us would prefer some sort of central activity.
We’ve so far whiffed on all of our few efforts to join broad based “meet new people” type events, as they were either not quite our vibe or organizationally a disaster. I put us up for volunteering for a “meet in IRL” group but haven’t heard back from the organizer. That is not too sad because it seems like mostly what this group does is hike around in big groups and then go have a drink somewhere.
Luckily, books is now like a social thing. There are bars that are book themed, there are so many “come read together” type events, and many many other book related events. I’ll skip the book club reviews that I have forthcoming, as well as my ambition to start a Super Book Club™, but for now we’ve found a happy home at two book clubs.
The first one, was started by a friend I met during Platonic Speed Dating almost a year ago. This was a person whom I immediately vibed with, like it took just a handful of minutes to know we’d get along famously. Eventually, she started a summer series of book meetings, held at a lovely and new-to-us park near Golden Hill. Four to six of us have met up and gone through Martyr!, Killers of the Flower Moon, Piranesi, Yellowface, and Braiding Sweetgrass.
The best part about this book club is the organizer--of course—who curated the book selections, brought treats to every meeting, and handed out little journals at the first meeting. Each conversation has been fun and easy, and the vibes are just excellent. Also, I am trying to not use “vibe” so much, since that is something I’ve noticed my Chat GPT overuses, but it’s just too useful of a word.
As for the second book club we’re currently in, it was just a few months ago we attended a Reading Rhythms event—“Not a book club. A reading party.”—which started in New York and is now in many cities. Sachi had been to a few out there, but this was a new experience for me. And the kicker was that it cost twenty dollars to attend, which sounds kind of wild at first because why pay so much to just sit around and read… but as my friend pointed out about her book club that meets at 7PM on Saturdays, “I want the people who would attend a book club on Saturdays to be there.” That barrier to entry weeds out all the casuals and insures the right mindset. And so it is with twenty dollars and a reading event.
This event was a little more special, as it featured some food vendors, a book swap table, used book sellers, and a DJ. The format was like this: you mingle for a little bit, the hosts do intros, and then everyone reads quietly for forty five minutes. After that, you find an assigned stranger to talk to for fifteen minutes, and then there’s another session of reading.
The indoor-outdoor venue was near the harbor, and initially quite hot, so people were choosing tables for shade. That was not our strategy. Sorry not sorry but you gotta pre-judge a table before you sit down! We honed in on a table of all women, all of color, and plopped ourselves down. (The organizers of the event are Filipino and Indian, and there seemed to be a very nice diverse mix of people, which was a nice surprise for San Diego.) Turns out it was a great decision as most of the people at that table were already in a book club together. Their head of PR person was extraordinarily friendly and we got along with her right away. After a few chit chats, Sachi and I were both very excited to join this group!
So far with this group there has only been two meetings—one for My Sister the Serial Killer and the most recent for The Shadow of the Wind. The people in this group are just so nice and warm and we love the group’s dynamic and energy—dare I say “vibe.” Also, importantly, they read a wider variety of books. See, many book clubs tend to be centered around only reading one genre, like romantasy, etc. Finding a book club that reads a variety of books is fantastic.
Joining this group also opened us up to attending other events together, like a recent “in conversation” thing with R.F. Kuang for Katabasis, and the KPBS San Diego Book Festival. Also, last week we went to check out a huge—meaning forty people—book club at Book Catapult, which we found out through one of their other members. A full review of the various book clubs will follow some day but let’s just say that our initial feeling of “that is just too many people” wasn’t correct! You can have a functional book club with a giant group!
There have been other non-book events that we’ve earmarked but so far haven’t attended many of. We’re hoping to perhaps join this Museum Studies program offered through Mesa College. We’ve met three people who’ve gone through the course and they all loved it. The program provides both theoretical and practical knowledge for a career in museum work. Our ultimate volunteering goals are to co-docent for an art museum or something. Finding friends through books and art is the way forward!