How do I come across as the smartest person in my book club?

Book clubs, although typically a front for middle aged people to get their foot in the door to a world of white collar crime or to wife swap, have been to known to be of literary merit in some extremely rare cases. If you’re actually in a legitimate book club, you may not be testing the sweet nectar of your buddy’s spouse, but at least you’re becoming educated. However, the sad truth is being intelligent is not a very good alternative to sex unless you are the most intelligent.

The following will make you sound vastly more intelligent than your fellow book enthusiasts:

Intelligence is directly proportional to your ability to recognize feminist imagery in a novel. By starting discussions on feminist themes, you immediately establish yourself as the book patriarch of the group. For example, if the book being discussed this month is Hemmingway’s Old Man and the Sea, you should make it clear to everyone that the old man represents a vagina. The sea is also representative of a vagina. Hemmingway also probably meant for the boat to be some kind of vagina schooner, too.

If the first thing that comes to your mind after seeing the above picture isn't "the pain of childbirth," then you're not the smartest person in your book club.

Make sure everyone knows the book being discussed touched you in a way no one else can experience. No one knows your life like you do, so feel free to take some liberties when relating a book to your life. If you’re reading Fahrenheit 451, recount the tragic events of your childhood through misty eyes as you tell in disturbing detail about how your family died when they were sprayed by a fire hose that shot kerosene.

Did you know... that firemen used to put out fires?

Talk about how you understand the author on a very surreal level. This kind of conversation will definitely give people the impression that you, without a shadow of a doubt, the smartest one at the book club. So smart in the fact, that everyone will be compelled to turn the book club into one of those fancy wife swappin’ book clubs. To convince people of this, pour a forty out for the author being discussed while yelling about how he was your homie.