Reading Lolita

I've been invited to join a book club. I'm wary, as I've never joined a book club, only had my own. The current book is Reading Lolita in Tehran. We were scheduled to meet on this past Tuesday. The meeting was cancelled at the last minute because, apparently, no one had finished reading the book, including the person who had selected it. It was just as well as by Tuesday night I was nursing what has become a hellacious cold.

I'm interested in meeting this group -- I know only one person, my neighbor Lisa, the person who invited me to join. I'm hoping we will reschedule before I forget everything I want to say about the book.

If you haven't read it, it's a bleak work of nonfiction. More than anything, it made me want to re-read The Great Gatsby and Lolita, two novels to which much content is devoted in the book. I like the concept of the book -- a memoir in books, as it is described. The concept alone reminds me of a bit of my own fiction I've set aside, more of a memoir in outfits, I guess, the stories linked by my ridiculous ability to recall in every major life event what I and what others wore. I may pick the piece up again; it's had time to rest and breathe, perhaps it's time to see if I can bring it to the final pages.

What is it about book clubs, I wonder? For years my friend Judy and her husband have been involved in a couples book club. Rarely does the entire club read the book. I really don't get the point, unless it's like another friend I have whose group of girlfriends have Bunko nights and rarely actually play the game.

Maybe it would better for me to relive my college days and enroll in a literature course where the reading is required and everyone shows up for class. Do these still exist?