Loading…
12
Unpopular opinion: most book clubs ruin the book by talking about the author instead of the story
I noticed this about a month ago at our Thursday meeting in the back room of the Fairview library. We spent 50 minutes on a 300 page novel and maybe 10 of it was about the actual plot and characters. The rest was one member reading aloud from a magazine interview about the author's divorce, and everyone nodding like that counted as discussion. I finally said something, and the room went quiet for a second, then three people admitted they had not even finished the book. Our next pick, a short mystery, got the best talk we have had in months because nobody could dig up gossip on the writer. Do your groups end up talking about the person who wrote the book more than the book itself, or is that just us?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
richard1106h ago
The line about nobody could dig up gossip on the writer really hit me, because that is the whole thing right there. When the author is a mystery, the group has to actually deal with the story, and that is when you find out who really read it and who just skimmed the back cover. But here is the thing nobody talks about: some people join book clubs for the social time, not the books, and author gossip is an easy way to feel like you are part of the talk without doing the work. The problem is that lets half the group hide, and the ones who actually finish the book end up carrying the whole meeting. Maybe the fix is not banning author talk but timing it, like save it for the last ten minutes so the story gets the first hour. That short mystery worked because there was nothing else to hide behind, and that tells you plenty about what your group really wants out of Thursday nights.
8