I didn't want to quit my book club; it's just that, whenever I thought about reading another book club selection, I could sort of feel the walls closing in on me? I quite often did not enjoy the books, and my choices were often not enjoyed by the others. While I love eating crackers and dip in the middle of the afternoon, I don't need to read Lullabies for Little Criminals in order to do that.
I really like the women in the club—my mom's age and my mom's friends, but also my friends now?—and they are gracious hostesses. There is shrimp cocktail and hearty chili, there are crudites and tiramisu cups. There are well-trained dogs beside us on the coach. It's lovely, really. It's fun! We talk about real estate and our kids, about Trump (yuck) and people's gardens (yay!). But the book-club part of the afternoon weighed heavily on my mind.
Each month, the spectre of the book hung over my head like Damocles' sword. I often tore through the last 60 pages of a novel or memoir right before before a club gathering. If you asked me what my favourite book club books were, I would say the Matthew McConaughey memoir that I finished with literal minutes to spare, and a lyrical one about seashells that I didn't finish at all. These are not my favourite books; these are just the ones I remember. I retain nothing! I forget character names because I never bothered learning them in the first place. And the stress of the selections (especially mine!) was too much. I chose weird books—Thomas Pynchon? Honestly, what was I thinking—and folks rightly did not often enjoy them. I am a total sham huckster weirdo of a book club member.
So I quit! And it felt great.
Immediately, I started reading other books again, books that I wanted to read, but "couldn't" because I was duty-bound to the book club selection and felt guilty reading anything else. I read memoir upon memoir—Crying in H Mart, Monster: A Fan's Dilemma, and Doppelganger, reading them greedily because I could. I read one zillion graphic novels, many of them from the YA shelves, each a perfect little Saturday-morning bed-lounger. I read short story collections (which I usually don't go for), and novels (which I tell myself I do, and then wander off). I tried an audiobook novella about queer librarian cowboys. I even quit books I wasn't enjoying, which felt like a luxury.
I do not think of myself as a quitter. I have died on many hills, and lingered far too long on others where I was unwanted or ill-fitting. I stayed in jobs that sucked, friendships that felt like a bad sweater, a city that was far beyond our means, and a marriage that expired years before we actually split. Quitting is for losers, and I am white-knuckle determined to not be one of those.
Except! It turns out that quitting those bad jobs cleared the lane for good ones; that ending the marriage was the right call; that moving to a smaller town meant fresh starts. I grieved those itchy friendships intensely—not all endings are a relief—but in the end, I l did reluctantly learn a lot about the type of friend I wanted to be, and wanted to have.
Quitting is not easy for me. I hate feeling like I'm letting people down. I hate feeling like I'm going to miss out on something fun. Not-quitting is an easy way to avoid those things. My mom had recruited me into book club years ago; would she be disappointed I was taking what I pitched as "an extended hiatus"?
Yeah, slightly! She was a little bummed! So were the other members. But that's okay. If taking a long break from book club was the pick-up stick that held the marble of our relationships aloft, we would be on fragile terms indeed. I trusted my mom not to be mad about it; she trusts me to come back if/when I feel ready.
My relationship with quitting is tied directly with other elements of my personality: perfectionism, FOMO, a fear of getting in trouble, an allergy to being perceived as feckless. Staying in places, practices and relationships that no longer serve means I have to acknowledge that there's a problem in the first place (horror!) and make changes (difficult!) that might turn out to be "incorrect" (oh god?!), leading to yet more quitting and even more changes. This cycle is scary! I am just a girl! A forty-one year old girl!!
On the other hand, it turns out that quitting nothing and carrying everything is exhausting. I'm obviously not ruthless in my approach—I'm fascinated by people who are like, "everyone is toxic," but that's just not me. But practicing the gentle art of giving up has been a great personal challenge: where do I feel like my goals are not, in fact, my own? Can I put guardrails in place in some relationships, or do I need to call the whole thing off? What was once helpful that now feels sticky?
Giving myself permission to quit feels tied up in something—maybe I feel like I have to own up to "making a mistake"?—but the reality, I benefit from a little quitting every now and then. It's like pruning a garden: I have to recognize that something are old, broken, outgrown, not helpful, in the way, or actively harmful to the life I'm trying to live. Is that a lot of pressure to put on a book club, say? Sure. But in the four months since I've quit the club, I've read 22 books. Before I took a break, it was a book or two a month, tops. Make of that what you will.
Image by Kevin Dowd