The case for a book club of one

Most people who join a book club do it for the right reasons. They want to read more, and they want company while doing it. A few months in, many of them are reading a novel they would never have chosen, on a deadline they didn’t set, in order to have an opinion about it by Thursday.

That isn’t a failure of the people in the club. It’s what happens when several readers with different tastes have to agree on one book. The pick is a compromise, and a compromise is rarely anyone’s favourite.

A personal book club keeps the good part, which is paying attention to what you read, and drops the committee. Here is why that’s worth having.

You only read what you chose

Reading time is limited. If you finish a book every two or three weeks, you get roughly twenty a year. Spending four of those on books picked by vote is a real cost.

In a club of one, every book on the list is there because you wanted it. You can follow one author through five novels, read nothing but short history for a season, or go back to something you loved at nineteen. Nobody has to approve it.

You learn your own taste

In a group, taste gets averaged out. You find out what the room thinks of a book, which is interesting, but it tells you little about why you liked it or didn’t.

When you’re the only member, the questions get more useful. What did the last three books you loved have in common? What made you put the last one down: the pace, the tone, the length? Write the answers down, even in a line or two, and choosing the next book gets easier each time.

“I want something light after work” is a better guide to your next book than any bestseller list.

You can quit a book

Quitting is the most underrated reading skill. A book club makes it awkward, because showing up without having finished feels like letting people down. So you push through two hundred pages you aren’t enjoying, and reading starts to feel like homework.

Alone, you can stop at page forty and pick up something else the same evening. People who let themselves quit tend to read more, because they are never stuck.

Your opinions stay honest

It’s hard to say “I didn’t get it” about a book everyone else in the room admired. It’s just as hard to admit you loved the thriller the group found trashy. In company, most of us adjust what we say a little.

A private record has no audience. You can mark the prize-winner as a pass and the airport paperback as a favourite, and that record is what makes your next choice a good one.

It runs on your schedule

Some months you read four books. Some months you read none, and that is fine. A club of one has no meetings to miss and no one waiting on you. It’s there when you notice a book in a shop window or in a friend’s flat, and it’s quiet the rest of the time.

It doesn’t replace your friends

None of this is an argument against talking about books with people. If your book club is really a monthly dinner with friends, keep it. The dinner is the point.

A personal book club does a different job. It’s where you decide what to read, keep track of what you thought, and get a little better at knowing what you like. You can do that with a notebook. We built Anti-social book club to make it quicker: point your phone at a book, see what it is and how it fits your taste, and decide whether it goes on the pile.

The club is in session whenever you are.