DEAR Jasminda,

I HAVE been part of a book club for two years.

One of the members recently confessed that they don’t read any of the books (they listen to the audiobook or sometimes just read the first 50 pages and the final page).

Am I wrong to think this isn’t ‘real’ reading?

Are they cheating somehow?

My understanding is that books need to be read, in full, to embrace their effect.

Hermione D.

Dear Hermione,

Your name conjures up a particular image for me.

I can see you and your fellow book club members ranged around a coffee table, a platter with cashews, sliced pear, homemade hummus dip, perhaps some black seedless grapes strategically draped over its bamboo edge.

You with your notebook full of carefully observed points of discussion.

And, when it’s your turn to host, carefully selected wines based on literature, pouring glasses of Chianti or full-bodied Port in honour of Sherlock Holmes.

Casually dropping Virginia Woolf’s line about language being ‘wine upon the lips’, a reference completely lost by fellow book clubber Susan, whose wild gesticulations mean she somehow manages to get more wine on her lap than in her mouth.

And you would never dare to resort to book club trickery (perhaps reading a review or two, Googling a synopsis, removing any hope of an original thought by resorting to SparkNotes).

Nor would you listen to an audiobook, because that is somehow less authentic.

It’s taking the work out of it. If language is wine upon the lips, what is it when someone else’s lips are involved?

I’d say it’s literary infidelity.

Stick to your moral code, Hermione.

Don’t cheapen the experience with Bose earplugs.

Suffer through your blurred vision and your pulled neck muscle from trying to finish the last chapter before book club night, just as the author has suffered through years of drafts, imposter syndrome, a below-minimum wage, a divorce, and a bad Goodreads review by a faceless person named LitChickxox (which felt like a knife to the heart).

You are correct in stating that the most important rule of a book club is to read the goddamn book.

Carpe diem,
Jasminda.