Everyone has the one aspect of their job that they dread doing. For a lot of the librarians in the fleet that’s bridge. Bridge players can be nasty, overly serious and sometimes downright rude. Especially if they think you should be the one in charge and therefore able to solve all their problems no matter how impossible.
I don’t mind bridge, not particularly.
For me, my dread is book club.
I hate book club.
Even as a voracious reader myself I’ve never had any desire to join a book club, let alone lead one!
I never have any idea of what to say, or what to do, or how to sound remotely like I know what I’m talking about, plus three quarters of the time the books are ones I don’t even like and would never choose! For example, on one of my previous ships I had to lead the book club for Gardens of Water, most depressing racist (against more than one race) horrible book ever written. I actually pitched it against the wall several times while forcing my way through it. The book club though, loved it. This confused the heck out of me, because a few weeks prior to that I had given the same group Annie Freedman’s Fabulous Travelling Funeral which I personally think is brilliant. I mean it isn’t high art or anything like that, but it’s a good travel read with a positive message. They detested it. Personally I thought at the time that it made them think about things they didn’t want to think about, lost friendships and such, I still think that. Gardens of Water however? They loved. I had to practically sew my mouth shut every meeting to prevent myself saying something that would get me in trouble because I thought the book was disgusting.
Experiences like this are why I hate book club.
Fortunately this time around I have actually got an excellent group, they’ve taken the time to get to know me and they aren’t condescending as many of my other book groups in the past have been. Often when someone much younger than the mean age of the group is running the group, her opinions are completely dismissed (back when I was going through Annie Freedman with that other group, I always got hit with “you wouldn’t understand you’re too young”).
This time we were reading Lisa See’s Peony In Love, this put me in a particularly interesting position as Peony is, at its heart, a ghost story and if there’s one thing I know perhaps too well, it’s ghost stories.
It’s interesting to see how different people interact with a subject that you have made an unofficial study of most of your life. It’s also interesting to see how people hear what they want to hear, not what you’re actually saying. Today was the only time that got slightly heated, because there were two women who were bound and determined to contradict what they thought I was saying, not what I actually was. The exchange went something like this:
One thing I think is interesting and is worth touching on is the contrast between the idea of ghosts etc in the culture depicted in the book, and the modern western concept of ‘ghosts’…the majority of western popular culture doesn’t really encourage belief..
I didn’t even get to finish the sentence which would have been “in the supernatural and yet and yet in the historical culture presented here it’s not only a part of everyday life, it’s expected and respected to believe in ghosts”
Immediately these two women jump on me and get really defensive
That’s not true! The church has saints! We believe in the spiritual realm
That’s…not what I was trying to say
But we do! You can’t say western culture has no belief in spiritual realms!
I didn’t! That’s not what I’m…
What about the Holy Ghost ?? What about the trinity!?
That’s not the kind of comparison I….
And this goes back and forth for a few minutes and they simply will not let me finish my thought. Finally I actually was forced to raise my voice.
Excuse me!! I need you to really listen to what I’m actually saying here, because I don’t think I’m saying what you think I am. Historically speaking there has of course been a parallel chain of belief in the supernatural in almost every religion, and if you look far enough back you’ll probably find all those beliefs are very similar because they’re all rooted in the same place, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about modern western culture. And I’m not talking spirituality, or religion, I’m talking ghosts, there is – in the mind of most people – a difference. What I’m trying to say is this: Look at the way Hollywood portrays ghosts: twilight, paranormal activity I II and III, Halloween, is any of that really a serious way of portraying the concept? I hardly think so. *that* is what I am getting at. The concept of ghosts and the supernatural in modern western culture tends to be very sensationalized, glamourized and frankly falsified, that hardly is a respectful or serious way of portraying the concept. Contrast that to what is portrayed in the setting of the book. Where you would be considered crazy not to believe in ghosts. NOW do you see what I’m getting at?
And they all looked at me and blinked
Oh…
Ghosts….might be the one topic of discussion you don’t want to tangle with me on.