Our book club pick about a tech startup fell apart - the discussion was a total mess

We chose a novel about a failed software company last month, but half the group hated the technical jargon and the other half loved it. The debate turned into people arguing over whether the author got the coding details right instead of talking about the actual story. Has anyone else had a book pick crash because the topic was too niche for your group?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_miles7d ago

Man that is such a bummer. I've totally been there with this one book club I was in where we picked a novel set in a hospital and half the people were nurses and the other half were not, and the whole night turned into this weird argument about whether the author got the IV drip scene right instead of talking about the actual human drama of the story. It really sucks when a book that should be about people and emotion gets derailed by technical nitpicking, even though I get why people who know their stuff care about details. The whole vibe shifts from discussing what the book made you feel to defending or attacking facts, which is just not what makes a book club fun. Your group probably just needed someone to pull the conversation back toward the characters or the plot or the themes, like that other commenter said, because once you start debating software code details there's really no way to make that a good discussion for everyone. I hope you guys try again with something more accessible next time!

lee_bailey658d ago

Honestly, we had the same issue with a sci-fi book once. I just started the discussion by asking everyone to pick one character they liked or hated, and that got us talking about the story instead of the tech.