Insufferable and socially alienated teenager tries to join a club and FAILS!!! (real not clickbait) (long read)

Catchy title, I know. I have an epic story for you today, and by 'you' I mean the possibly three or so people who will read this. Let's make out. 

This isn't at all from today, though, so bear with me as I attempt to utilise my defective brain and recall this lovely, lovely event.

So, to set the scene. About a month ago, this said 'socially alienated teenager' had an absolutely ingenious thought. Since I'm such an outcast due to having zero popular hobbies whatsoever, and routinely find it hard to relate to my peers, why not join a club full of other nerds just like me? For some reason, my great, wonderful brain has never had this thought, god forbid it even considers the possibility of socialising, that's usually the end for me. However, as of recent years, I've taken up a few new hobbies that have gained popularity amongst the masses. One such example is reading.

If you've even briefly read through my profile, you already know that I'm the world's n1 nerd, particularly in the aspect of being a book nerd. If you haven't... well, now you know. It's also quite tell-tale from just this fact alone that I'm severely undersocialised. As a result of this, and the people in my life's continued efforts to try to get me to be a functioning member of society someday, I came to the astounding conclusion that I would join a book club. Surely it couldn't be so bad, right? My main issue with socialising with my peers is typically the fact that the kids at my school are... anomalies, to say the very least. I don't mean to put myself on a pedestal, but I consider myself a much more civilised person compared to some of the absolute barbarians who go to my gracious academy. I have no interest in interacting with the same lot that throw breadsticks at me during lunch (yes, this has happened.) My thought process was that surely the people in a book club would be a bit more civilised, and a bit easier to talk to as a result.

So, here I endeavour to find myself a book club. There are many options; however, the majority of them were off limits, considering I'm a teenager, and many book clubs specifically state they only accept adults. So my approach was to search for teen book clubs because surely there's PLENTY.

There, I was sorely mistaken. After searching my county, a neighbouring county an hour away, and the nearest big city, I found one. A singular book club for teenagers. So I checked the website, maybe this would work out.

As we know from the title, this is not true. 

Their website said there were spaces, which was good (?) news. I emailed and got an email in response within days. This was good. After this great joy, I pulled my signature move, which I now regret, of checking every single book they'd ever read and researching them fully to make sure I wouldn't exclusively be reading books I hated. I, of course, achieved this with the trusty Wayback Machine.

Now, would you believe me if I said that ALL my worst fears had come true, and that every single book they had read was... (gags) romantically themed..? Heaven forbid!!! Not even just a bit, but nearly the entire plot of each book relied on the romance aspect!

To be completely honest, I was expecting this. Most YA writers (of which I was expecting to read quite a bit of, considering it's a teen book club) seem to think that romance is this ultra-universal experience, which is especially important in your teens.

 As you can clearly tell from my definitely not sarcastic writing here, I don't exactly agree with that sentiment. The AroAce gremlin in my brain began to bang its head into the wall at that moment. Obviously, I understand that most YA is, after all is said and done, usually heavily reliant on a romantic plot, but every book? Now I won't drop names here, but I recall that every single one of these books had some mention of romantic relations, or men (in a romantic way), on the front or back cover.

Now I'm not one to shame others for their reading preferences; however, after searching the bookstores and libraries of two counties and an independent big city, I was perhaps hoping to find a decent book club that would at least somewhat appeal. Perchance. As an AroAce person, I know very well that I can't read or understand romance. That may not be the case for every AroAce, but for me, reading romance is the equivalent of having someone get in my face and start shouting at me to go to therapy and fix my deficiencies, that there's something intrinsically wrong with me. Reading about 'steaming hot men' would also probably make me puke. (This was an actual descriptor used on the back of one of the aforementioned books.)

And so I come to my conclusion: After searching far and wide, my poor soul still has not found rest. Or friends. Or a book club, for Christ's sake. However, the search continues, especially as next month is my city's literature festival, and I'm still checking out all the events. Maybe I'll find something eventually. 

(thanks for reading my really long and insufferable rant!!! :3)