Debbie Does Drivel

I'M A READER, NOT A FIGHTER

I'm hurt.
Really, I'm not being funny.

The book club I started 7 years ago doesn't need me anymore.
This really mean girl assumed leadership of the book club and is trampling over my opinions and generally being nasty.

I've probably been annoying to this nasty petty girl in the past. When I'm passionate about things, I get spazzy. I'm spazzy about books. I like them. I like to discuss them. I like to get heavy about them sometimes.

I steered the book club in that direction: suggesting non-fluffy books and fostering good discussion about them. For years there was resistance. The icky yukky girl pushed back on everything I suggested. She obviously didn't like my leadership. And I am sure I wanted to lead a little too much...because after all, it was my book club and I'm spazzy about books.

When I had my baby and missed a few meetings, she took the opportunity to usurp my throne. Now, she gives me dirty looks and corrals other members against me when I suggest anything she doesn't agree with.

This month, she took it upon herself to declare February Samurai Garden month. We've already read two books this year by that author and the books are OK, but read a lot like an Easy Reader. And, there's nothing to discuss about them. They're fiction, they're fluffy Chinese lit, and we've read the genre by the SAME author before.

She ignored my suggestion the previous month to read The Kite Runner and made me feel as if I'd never brought it up.

And that's what she does: she sneakily ignores that which those she doesn't like suggests and instead passes her own agenda items.

(Have I told you that she regularly reads the last page of books first and decides whether she likes the ending or not and then either does or doesn't read the whole book based on that? This is the person who commandeered my book club.)

She's mean. Really, really mean. She has a very subtle, manipulative way of making you feel bad -- generally by making snide comments under her breath and rolling her eyes about you to anyone who'll watch her.

She hurts my feelings and I've felt so bad being in the book club, that I'm leaving.

The last straw was this past Monday. She threw out a date for Feb.'s book club that everyone agreed to...then the next day changed it to another day (my baby's b-day). I told her I couldn't make it and she told me that I must have misunderstood: we'd decided on that date I couldn't make the night before and I must not have been paying attention and that it wasn't going to change just b/c I couldn't make it. Yet, the reason she changed it in the first place was for people who couldn't make it...

Subtle. Manipulative. Hurts me.

So I'm out. Starting a new book club. One or two people from the old club will join me...

Wish I could tell Meanie how she's a horrible person, but that wouldn't be very bibliophile of me.