Our book club paid $30 for a fancy annotated edition and nobody read the footnotes

We picked up this special hardcover of a classic novel for our monthly meetup, thinking the extra commentary would spark some solid debate. Cost us $30 each, which felt steep but we figured it'd be worth it for the insight. First meeting rolled around and everyone just skimmed the main text, barely touching the annotations. I spent 20 minutes on one page trying to connect the footnotes to the plot, and by the time I looked up, the group was arguing about the movie adaptation instead. Felt like a waste of cash and a missed chance to really dig into the author's intent. Has anyone else tried those special editions and actually gotten good discussion out of them?

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fiona_fox562h ago

Joined a similar thing last year with a fancy edition of Moby Dick. The footnotes were all about whaling history, and by page 50 I was the only one still reading them out loud. The rest of the group just wanted to talk about the whale being a metaphor. Nobody cared that harpoons had to be barbed a certain way to stick. Spent $38 on that book and it's basically a coaster now.