Book club making me very uncomfortable

[lolaflores]

I am a reader. I enjoy the company of other readers and getting recommendations, usually about fiction but I enjoy biography and love history.
A few months ago I joined a book club, something I have never done, probably because I didn't know about any near me. A friend introduced me to other friends of hers.
This friend is very invovled (borderline obssessed) with a certain topic. Its an issue that I have experienced and have been scarred for life from (not an exaggeration). I have been very boundaried with her on the topic, explained that it is difficult for me when she wants to talk endlessly about it and she has calmed down a bit.

However, everything now at the bookclub is directed to this subject. She sends links in the whatsapp group and this months book is on the topic. I wasn;t at the meet up when it was chosen but I got sent the link.

I honetsly cant read it. From the bottom of my heart, I have asked myself to just try it, be objective, but I am struggling to bring myself to even buy it.
Its got to the point now where I don't want to go anymore. Every conversation comes back round to the subject when she is around. It makes me deeply uncomfortable and upsets me. It is suffocating me
.
I am with people I don't know and who don't know me though it is a to;pic everyone has some experience of, all different but personal. Then it turns into a kind of group therapy thing. Except I don't want to have to talk about it in those conditions but I feel like if I go, I won't have a choice. Reading the book is like consenting to having to share with people something I don't think I want to.

At the group I attended, nay founded, the first meeting went really well. In a pub, great chat about the book. Everyone went home happy.

Then it was:

‘Can we have it at my house? I hope everyone likes cats by the way, I’ve got five.’
‘I don’t drive, so someone will have to pick me up and take me there’.
‘Can we read book X?’ Featuring theme that one person had specifically said that they wanted to avoid.

I decided that I was best off in a book group of one!

Might try again when I am retired and have more time/patience for nonsense!

Ime it's good to have certain ground rules such as how you choose the books,how many people in the group at one time etc,how much wine is to be drunk a lot

I would drop out of this book club all together. Who wants to spend a social evening sitting around discussing death??

Also, I would drop out for her response alone.

“Face your fears” would have me furious for weeks.

Your friend sounds like an utter twat.

There are proper death cafes for this sort of thing, not a book club.

shes the problem though, not the book club.

shes the one id get rid of- and happily tell her why.

I take it that she’s the one who replied with “face your fears”?

She sounds nuttier than squirrel shit. You don’t deserve having to put up with her

(Sorry OP if this triggers you - just going to talk about death doulas)
For all those WTAFing at death doulas, I believe they're there to help ppl e.g. with terminal illness come to terms with their own death and have the death they want. I think it's a great idea - for ppl that want that and if the 'right' person is doing the job!

Fwiw you're totally within your rights to leave the group!

Its fine to be a doula. I'm not interested in her career plans as the event for me was horrific. She wo t listen and just breezes on like a clanking great train Not exactly doula material. No real ability to read a situation even with huge signs shebisbon marshy ground

She reminds me of a friend of mine who wanted to be a counsellor because she knew a lot from watching Dr.Phil and thought people could learn a lot from comparing their situations with her own life.

That face your fears and we will support you comment - wow 🤔😲

Yep. She doesn't see how the weight of that impacts yourself. No idea how or who would give her proper supervision.

I strongly suspect, although I could be wrong, that she has actually engineered this situation specfically because you have told her you don't want to do it.
She sounds like one of those people who insist that they can help you through whatever, even though you know yourself that they can't, and keep on and on and on and on and ON at you in different ways until you give in and realise that they're right. Except they never are.
This would be the end of this friendship for me.

I once knew a woman who was going out with a friend of mine who had lost his mother - she was insistent that he needed to open up about the experience, that he could "face his demons", that she could help him etc. - omfg. SHe just pushed and pushed and pushed - but he wouldn't budge and I don't blame him.

This sort of behaviour is potentially emotionally vampiric, getting off on watching someone else go through their pain again; or it can be from "white knight syndrome", where the person gets huge satisfaction from "helping someone", but not in an altruistic fashion, just because they were "doing good". I'm not explaining that well - they do it for their own "feelgood" response, not for the benefit of the other person (and sometimes for the public reaction too).

Whichever reason she is doing it for, it's no good for you, so you really should bin her off entirely - she won't stop.

What I'm about to say is probably the reason why I don't have friends but I'd have told her to fuck off in front of everybody. She sounds, if not mad completely awful and I'd have told her exactly that and why.

I'll bet you're not the only one in the group to feel this way, OP.

I had to leave a book club because it became all about one person, her life, her job, her issues and although books were picked out of a hat, it's amazing how they were more often than not ones she'd put in. She administered the whole process because she didn't trust anybody else to do it 🙄. She basically controlled the whole club as her pet project.
I wasn't the only person to leave and funnily enough the rest of us meet up occasionally and we don't invite her.

I do think it's being theatrical helping and we r all spear holders. She is involved on everything. Everyone's business. Every committee.

Very wearing.
I have told her to fuck off with herself previous to this bit she is oblivious.
No clue that there were uncomfortable silences when she launched into death cafe promotion or the meet up at the library for a tea and chat about death.
Then sent on an ad in the WhatsApp group then this book for reading
I am going to DM two of the other people and suggest coffee and a catch up some place else. Not necessarily book based but Iikenthem and enjoy their company.
It's all just gone a bit mad really and over bearing

I would say something that makes it easy for the others to agree with you. Something breezy like no way, I only joined to have fun!
You might rescue the book club yet if you can get the rest of the group an easy way to chime in.

You deserve a better book club with less of a hidden agenda.

I never think of Terry Prachett being sci Fi. I think of him as satire.

It's all sort of tumbling out of her like she cant hold back.
It gets her very excited and she just wont stop.
I'm not a great joiner. Dont know many people and had Hope's but I feel very let down that shes tried to manipulate everyone and it's just turned me off.
Dear old Terry is hard to place isn't he. Some of the concepts about story and the physics of time etc are fascinating.
Discovered Jasper Fford too. Fell totally in love.
Neil Gaiman fan and the book about New York being submerged and flooded was brilliant.
Douglas Adam's.
That sort of sci fi appeals to me.

Find a better group!

Sounds awful - a death book club - WTF ? She's nuts.
I'd leave. I've just left a bookclub because I found one of the members forced her opinions and reading choices onto everyone, so all we read was crime thirllers and true life guff about hero police dogs etc. Not my bag. Also they kept choocing more and more books to read each months so by the time Ieft they were up to reading four books 9which we were expected to buy) - I haven't got the money or the time.

Anyway - I joined another one at my local library that is really good fun. Worth asking at your library for local groups - then you can try them out, often there are clubs for particular interests - so you might find one that is for fantasy/ Terry Pratchett type of books which you;d enjoy more.

My ruel now for any social clubs is I give a go for a few months, and then if I find I'm not looking forward to going I leave - it's easy to start feeling you have an obligation to keep going to these things. And if crazy woman asks why you;ve left - I'd be upfront - she's probably putting other people off too.

Hello kurrikurri how r u? I've seen you here down the years.
Why are there people out there that cant seem to just let stuff happen? Like kids in school who organised games and they would run the wendy house or own the skipping rope.
I usually ended up making mud pies and flicking off the games police cos I just wanted to have a laugh and not be bossed a out too much. I'm not an anarchist but I'm no nodding dog either.

Hi Lola - I'm good thanks, hope you are too.
I've found with most things I've gone too there is always one person who has to try to take over, it's really annoying. I'm pretty laid back and I'm alwyas happy to go with other people's suggestions for books etc. - but when it's one person taking over and choosing the same thing every time, I can't be bothered with the hassle. I just move on

I left one book club when one of the members gave us all study questions to make notes on and present the following week. It was like being back at school.