The week our book club fell apart over a single chapter

Last Tuesday the whole thing went sideways. We were supposed to discuss chapter 12 of this literary novel about a family farm, but three people showed up having only read the first five chapters. One lady started defending the main character's bad choices because of something that happens on page 87. Another guy kept interrupting to talk about the weather metaphors that aren't even there until chapter 15. I sat there for 45 minutes trying to hold it all together. By the end, someone said we needed a rule about page minimums before meetings. Has anyone else had a meeting where nobody agreed what they even read?

2 comments

2 Comments

stella_lee2d ago

Used to be the person who'd just skim the assigned pages and call it good, thinking it was fine as long as I got the general idea. Then last month my book club had a thing where one person read a different edition that had a whole paragraph missing from ours. Took us forty minutes to realize we were arguing about two completely different scenes. That farm book chapter 12 stuff you're describing is exactly the kind of nightmare that made me start taking chapter notes and actually reading the whole thing before meeting. Still haven't fixed the problem of people showing up having only read half though.

the_spencer2d ago

And that whole edition thing is just the tip of the iceberg, @stella_lee. I've noticed the same pattern everywhere like with recipes online where one version leaves out a key ingredient and people end up with totally different results arguing over who's the better cook. It makes you wonder how many arguments in life are really just people working with slightly different versions of the same basic information.