Hey, Sars:

I love your column, and when someone asked about book clubs, I couldn’t help but throw my two cents in.I was in a pretty good book club for a while when I was in school.For a long time, people struggled over how to pick their books, and so we each wrote down a broad category, like “British classics” or “Pulitzer prize winners” or “Canadian authors,” threw all of them into a bowl, and had each person draw.Whatever you ended up with was the category you could pick your book from.It turned out really well — it forced a lot of us to go out outside our comfort zones with our choices, and we ended up reading a lot of good books that we might not have thought of otherwise.It’s a system that might not work for everybody, but we sure had a hell of a lot of fun with it.

Good luck to Booky on the book club.Even if the book part doesn’t always come together immediately, the conversation and the alcohol MORE than make up for it.

K

Dear K,

Thanks for the suggestion!

Reader Lauren also tipped me off to Literature-Map.com; you plug in an author you like, and it arrays a bunch of other similar authors around the name.I knew something like that existed for bands, but I couldn’t find the literary analog.Thanks, Lauren!

Hi, Sars.

I’m hoping you can help me — I don’t know where else to go with this, cos it’s kinda trivial.

A few days ago, I was talking to a friend (let’s call him Enzo) and after asking me how my course is going (I’m coming to the end of a doctorate in literature) Enzo suddenly says, “I think that the only people who should use the ‘Dr.’ title are people who are medical doctors.” I was a little surprised, but told him that I fully intended to use my new title once I had gained it. However, when I thought about it later, I realised Enzo might have a point.

I am the first person in my family to go to college — never mind study for a PhD — and my family expects that once I graduate, I’ll be Dr. Blah, and to be honest, I’ve been looking forward to becoming Dr. Blah because I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. But since Enzo’s comment, I’ve been wondering if perhaps he’s right. If I call myself “Dr. Blah” without being a medical doctor, will people think I’m a big ol’ fake or a pretentious jerk? Should I stick with “Ms. Blah”? Is there some kind of protocol in this situation that I’m not aware of? (I’m British, if that makes a difference.)

Signed,
Smart with books, dumb in life

Dear S-M-R-T,

You’ll have graduated and earned a doctorate; you have every right to call yourself “Dr. Blah” if you want to, and to be credited that way professionally.It’s not pretentious.

What is pretentious is repeatedly or pointedly correcting people when they call you “Ms. Blah.”Introducing yourself as “Dr. Blah” is perfectly appropriate, but don’t be that person who hears herself introduced as “Ms. Blah” at a social functionand gets all miffy and “it’s Doc-tore, actualleh,” because even medical doctors shouldn’t do that.

Short form: calling yourself “Dr.,” great; humorlessly insisting that others do so, not so much.

Sars,

Since you seem to be the master of straight-up advice without pussyfooting around, I’m going to throw this one out there.

I have a friend whom I consider fairly close, but definitely not confidante close, who has an entire gaggle of friends that she hangs out with on a regular basis.For the past few years I’ve also hung out with them during group outings and have even tried cultivating some one-on-one friendships with several of the women in the group — to absolutely no avail.

Over the course of the past year or so, due to an issue that had arisen between me and a guy in the group, I’ve heard that many of these women and some of the men have had quite a few not-so-nice comments to make about me.I don’t think my friend is privy to this info, nor do I plan on telling her.

My problem is that I just don’t want to be around this extended group of people anymore but can’t seem to come up with a diplomatic way of telling my friend — especially in light of her fiance’s 40th b-day party, her b-day, and her upcoming nuptials.

Any suggestions on how to let her know that I want a friendship with her (and her fiance), but that doesn’t mean the rest of the muckety-mucks are included?

Signed,
Buckwheat Wants Out of Our Gang

Dear Buck,

How to “let her know”?No.I mean, sure, you could tell her you don’t like her friends, they don’t like you, and you’d rather have nothing to do with anyone in the group except her and her betrothed, but it’s not going to go over well, and in any case, it’s not really necessary.Just start opting out of activities where the folks you don’t care for will be in attendance; go to the ones you really have to go to, but skip everything else, and make plans with her and her fiance only if you want to hang out with her.

And one of three things will happen: she won’t really notice, so everyone wins (you don’t have to spend time with the others, but can still chill with her); she will notice, but will just leave it alone (not everyone’s friends all “blend” with each other, and most people can deal with that); or she’ll notice and say something, at which time you should just tell her the truth without editorializing.

But announcing that you don’t want to spend time with anyone in that group except her is kind of not appropriate here.A closer friend, maybe you could drop some hints and see where they went, but in this case, no.If you don’t want to attend activities or events because of her friends, then…don’t attend.

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