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Pro tip: skip the online reading guide for book club picks, it ruined my discussion
Our group picked a novel for June and I made the mistake of reading a chapter by chapter guide online before we met. I walked in with a whole list of themes and symbols ready, and about 20 minutes in I realized I had just repeated what everyone else found on the same sites. The talk went flat because four of us had the exact same takes and nobody had a real reaction left. Our host, Maria, finally said she wished we had all just come in blind and argued about whether the ending even worked. What rules does your group use to keep the talk from turning into everyone reading off the same notes?
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the_cameron5h ago
What worked for our group was simple: nobody looks anything up until after we meet. We show up with just our own messy thoughts and whatever we underlined while reading. It felt weird at first because half of us like to "prep" but the talks got SO much better. People actually disagreed, and one time we spent 40 minutes fighting about a character we all hated for different reasons. Turns out the bad takes and confusion are the whole point, that is where the real talk happens.
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