People are always asking me to join book clubs or telling me that I should join one. My reply is always the same: I don’t want to read books on a deadline. That’s too much like work, too much like all the years I spent studying literature and creative writing in college and grad school.

I love the fact that now I can start a book and abandon it after the first paragraph. My bedroom is littered with half-read books. I feel no obligation to finish books, and let’s face it, most non-fiction books would have been better as a long magazine article.

I like reading books, but not necessarily talking about them. Again, too much like college classes. And to be completely honest, I’m not that interested in what other people think. I’m interested in engaging with the author through the magic medium of books and discovering what the author thinks.

Then there’s the fiction factor: Most book clubs seem to focus on fiction, but I am captivated by non-fiction as well. Sometimes I just prefer exploring reality and learning new things.

And I’m such a book snob, I wouldn’t be caught dead reading a best seller. Oprah’s Book Club? Forget about it. Once a book lands on her list, I have to wait 10 years before considering it. And I take perverse pride in having read books way before they got famous. Example: Remember Seven Years in Tibet? I read it years ago, before it was made into a movie, during my year-long obsession with all things Tibetan.

That’s my modus operandi with books: I get obsessed by a topic or author, indulge my obsession, and then move on. I like the freedom to read what I want, when I want.

My husband is a member of a book club that’s been in existence for decades. Founded by college friends, this book club is coed. They have a complete list by year of all books read going way back in time. I find this admirable, but it’s not for  me.

As far as book clubs go, I could be a member of only one book club. It would be called the Little Dictator’s Book Club. I would be the little dictator. My book club would read only books that I decreed.

If you were a member of my little dictator book club, here are just some of the books you would have been forced to read over the years:

-All 17 novels by Patrick O’Brian about the Britsh Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars, Captain Jack Aubrey and his side-kick ship doctor, naturalist, polyglot and spy, Stephen Maturin. (The first one is Master and Commander, just in case you’re intrigued.)

-Numerous books about Canadian, Arctic and Antarctic exploration, including books about my heroes Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton. (And don’t get me started about that loser Robert Scott and his disastrous South Pole expedition.)

-The Outlander series of sci-fi/ romance/ historical fiction by Diana Gabaldon about a time-traveling nurse and her hunky Scottish husband Jamie set in the 1600s (and sometimes the 1900s).

-Anything by British historical fiction writer Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl) , who writes what I call “bodice rippers for the educated.”

-Anything by Bill Bryson, whether books about his travels or about the English language. His book Neither Here Nor There made me laugh so hard on an airplane I had to stop reading.

-Or how about Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude by former CIA officer Robert Baer, an eye-opening expose. Or The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11(Lawrence Wright), a mind-blowing book about what is in the minds of people like Osama Bin Laden.

Anyway, here I am writing about reading, when I could just as easily be reading a good book. That’s almost as bad as being in a book club. I’ll stop now, so we can both go curl up with a good book or a glowing, warm iPad or Kindle.