The Book Club

“I wouldn’t read that book if I was stuck in the dunny with a bad case of the squirts and I only had that and the back of the aerosol can to read”.

That was my introduction to the first meeting of the book club I recently joined. In fairness, I expected better, given that the meeting was in the kitchen of the Presbytery of my local Catholic church.

I’ve been looking for a little intellectual company since my kid was born. Reading Charlie and Lola books is all very well but it doesn’t exactly stimulate the mind. I knew something was up when we borrowed a “Little Red Train” book from the library and my daughter lost interest half way through the first reading. I forced her to sit through it until the end so that I could see if the train made it back to the station.

My wife and I used to be regulars at “Spirituality in the pub” which is aimed at Catholics who have stopped going to weekly mass but still have a need for an intellectual debate. They bring along guest speakers who are usually challenging in some way and it’s appropriately held in a pub with an al a carte menu as most of the people there are al a carte Catholics.

It was there that I learned of a Men’s Book Group connected to the local Parish. Since the dawn of the Internet, I found that I’ve stopped reading books, apart from large tomes on Military History. And I found that I only bought those because I liked the pictures in the middle.

So I was keen to get back on the reading wagon and the discipline of a book a month seemed to fit my limited time availability. 

Nevertheless, I approached my first meeting with some trepidation. The guys I’d met in the pub where all older and struck me as the sort who would look after the collection at mass and criticise the Priest for being too liberal.

So it was somewhat of a relief to be met by Gerry and his potty mouth. He is a retired developer and likes to stress his working class roots. The rest of the members are lawyers or doctors, with a retired judge thrown in for extra gravitas. Most of them are too polite to criticise the book we’re reviewing or to challenge the opinions of the other members. Apart from Gerry that is. It surprises me that he even turns up because he clearly dislikes books. I’ve been to four meetings so far and he has yet to finish any of the works we’re studying. It doesn’t stop him giving his opinions however, which are liberally peppered with more F and C bombs than you would get at a Richard Prior concert.

My first meeting reviewed “Caleb’s Crossing” by Geraldine Brooks. Most of us saw it as a harmless read. But Gerry’s take on it was that it was an effin potboiler that Barbara Cartland would have been proud of. I’ve never read any of Miss Catlland’s books, but I suspect that she rarely deals with the early interaction of white settlers in Massachusetts with the local Indian population. 

 Gerry’s Effing and blinding was too much for one of the more conservative members. He expressed the commonly held view that Gerry could make his point without so many references to carnal acts or female body parts.

Gerry response was instantaneous. “If you don’t like the effin heat, then eff off back to New Zealand and take all the other effin sheep shaggers with you”.

I was waiting for fists to fly which wasn’t my expectation when I signed up. Thankfully the chairman calmed things down by tabling the next book for review and moving the conversation to less controversial matters such as whether tea or wine would be more suitable for our gatherings.

Gerry muttered under his breath that he would need to be pretty pissed to read some of the shite that was on our upcoming list. 

I haven’t spent much time in the kitchen of a Priest’s house before. My mother was a woman ahead of her times and she brought us up with a healthy suspicion of Priests and their living quarters in particular. But I had imagined that it would be a spiritual and serene place. In truth, the kitchen is much like any other kitchen, apart from the fridge which contains more alcohol than a sailor on shore leave.

At the Christmas meeting, Gerry was more thoughtful, having been given a dressing down by the chairman. He still hated the book mind you and didn’t mind telling us that.

I thought he was a changed character, but the last meeting showed that he was back to his old self. This month’s book was “The Streetsweeper” by Elliot Perlman. He’s a Jewish writer from Melbourne and the book is a dark and troubling comparison of black civil rights in the US with the Holocaust. I wasn’t a big fan to be honest but kept my opinions on the right side of politeness.

Gerry, however, let go with both barrels. He hadn’t made it past the half-way point of the book, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He told us about the Jewish people he’d worked with in the building trade and his less than favourable opinions of their work practices. He ranted on for another ten minutes or so with opinions that Hitler would have left out of Mein Kampft for fear of offending people.

The Kiwi, who he had offended at our earlier meeting, was growing more apoplectic by the minute and had to excuse himself before he exploded. 

I stuck it out until the end when they had calmed Gerry down with glass of passable red. As I was leaving, he asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a Banker.

His eyes lit up and he said “Do you know the difference between a Banker and a Wanker? Nothing they both……..”.  Luckily I was already at the door thinking intellectual conversation is not what it used to be.