Lexie: Bringing Together the Elements for Great Friendships

Everyone at book club have at least three things in common: we are all book people, we all identify somewhere on the asexuality spectrum, and, other than occasional visitors, we all live and/or work around London. The clue is in the name. We are the London Ace Book Club.

Lexie, who is a big reader and has been coming to book club since its beginning, says she comes along for the friends they have made here.

“I talk about the fire triangle of relationships. It’s like, interest in books was the spark that got me to go ‘ooo, a book club, that might be fun’, but it’s the people that keep me coming back.”

In our meetings we are often discussing non-fiction or YA “romance-ish” books simply because these are the genres dominating the market of asexual books at the moment. Lexie, who reads both of these genres, said she can’t point to a book that she definitely wouldn’t have read if it wasn’t for book club. However, she followed this by saying that book club gets her reading more books with asexual representation than she would do otherwise.

“As someone who has not had a shortage of ace people in my life, and I am very fortunate in that way, […] I’m at a point where [people to connect to over a shared sexuality, and] books with ace representation, is not something I’m actively seeking out. [The] proportion of books I think I would have read without book club? I’m going to say it’s maybe about ten percent”

Before book club existed, there were still ace meetups around London, but these were often individual events that “happened when somebody had the energy to organise them”. The discussions at these one-off gatherings would centre around asexuality, and the chosen activity wasn’t always a shared interest among those attending. Book club, on the other hand, brings together all the elements for friendships to form, starting with multiple degrees of commonality.

“The best bits of book club are when we’re discussing the book and it’s not just a general-purpose discussion about our asexuality.”

Lexie comes along to book club looking to have enjoyable conversations about books, an interest of hers, in a space where she does “not have to explain [her] queerness”. Books are the common interest, but having an ace-specific space is important too. In her words, “there’s the comfort aspect” to queer spaces where “we’re not on-edge.”

Her definition of an enjoyable conversation? Well, Lexie finds she walks out the bookshop each month being able to view the book from many perspectives beyond her own, something she went on to discuss:

“My favourite book clubs are the ones where I go in kind of, basically, lukewarm on the book. I didn’t come away thinking they were terrible - I probably gave them, like, three stars. But what I really enjoyed was there were people in the room that were like ‘oh my god, this was my favourite book ever with depth and imagery’ and I get to see all that I missed.”