If you?re the kind of reader who favours Tolstoy over Harry Potter, and cringes at the phrase ?Oprahs Book Club? ? then a local bookclub wants you to know you?re not alone in the literary wilderness.

This week the Bookworm Beat met with Craig Harris who is a member of a book club called The Bermuda Island Readers? Club. So far they are only five members strong, but they are hoping to recruit new members to their literary ranks.

?My own tastes wouldn?t be the top ten bestseller list in fiction,? said Mr. Harris. ?It wouldn?t be probably very many things they are writing and publishing today. I like D.H. Lawrence, Leo Tolstoy and Graham Greene and things like that. We try to push ourselves a little bit. We read a variety.?

Mr. Harris started out in another book club a few years ago, but like many clubs it petered out after members left the island or drifted away.

He tried to start another group, but it evolved into the type of fiction that doesn?t interest him.

He left the bookclub, but after a little while he began to miss being a part of one. A couple of months ago he and his friend started up The Bermuda Island Readers Club, designed to cater to other readers with Mr. Harris? finicky palate.

?We like to learn ? that is probably a hallmark of the group,? he said. ?So non-fiction is probably eighty percent of what we gravitate towards.

?At the moment we have five members, and tentatively six. We seem to be pulling people in one by one. We are looking to get maybe eight or nine people so we have some luxury is someone can?t make it or drop out.?

The hardest part about running a bookclub in Bermuda is actually getting a hold of multiple copies of one book. Mr. Harris doesn?t have a lot that?s good to say about local bookstores, which he says have often unapologetically left him in the lurch.

?We began by saying that for speed?s sake we would take what we could find in the book shop,? he said. ?When you have three or four members it is doable.

?We are now trying a new experiment where we are one ahead of ourselves. At the moment we are supposed to order something for the April or May meeting called ?A Woman in Berlin?.

?We are hoping we will have the next book in our hands already when we meet. You can?t rely on the bookstores down here. Best case scenario, the bookstores can take three days.

?The last book we ordered from one of them took three weeks. So it can be dangerous. That can be the hardest part of coordinating something like that.?

He said that being a reader in Bermuda, in some respects, is no different than anywhere else thanks to the Internet and travel.

?I have a nice collection myself,? he said. ?But you lose the luxury of going to a large bookstore and browsing, or even a small bookstore, and just browsing.

?There is not much serendipity going on in most of the bookstores here. The same book sits on the shelf for five years, and they don?t even change the cover price.?

Mr. Harris questioned who was reading in Bermuda, based on what was available on the bookstore shelves.

?I am guessing that most of the people who read what we are reading just travel a lot or order their books online because they can?t be buying them here,? said Mr. Harris. ?We advertise in schools, libraries, business, supermarkets and we don?t get a really big response.

?If I had seen a bookclub like this six or seven years ago I would have been all over it thinking it was an oasis. It doesn?t seem to be everyone?s cup of tea here.?

He said their group wasn?t all male. There are two women in the Bermuda Island Readers Bookclub, and they would like to attract more.

?We have tried to read books that would be of interest to women, to try and broaden our own interests and bring in some new members,? he said.

Mr. Harris said some of the books they are reading might sound boring to other people, but they enjoy it. ?To me this is exciting,? he said.

Mr. Harris works in advertising and communications. He said there is a good mix of people in their group, even though there are only five members.

?These books that we read probably reflect our interests outside of our books,? he said. ?I am very interested in history and travel and things like that.

?It is difficult. Books are a very solitary hobby for a lot of people, and maybe pulling people out who want to read and talk is difficult. My last bookclub turned into more of an eating club. The girls would bring plates of hors d?oeuvres and wine.?

He said that when the group gets a little bigger, they hope to select a local book, and maybe have the author come in and talk to the group.

?We might do a field trip,? he said. ?So we are trying to pull other elements into it. It is not just a staid, stuffy meeting around a table. I don?t think it will necessarily bring droves of people in, but it will make it more interesting for us.?