Took me 6 months to realize my book club was a debate club in disguise

I kept bringing up plot holes in our monthly reads and everyone would argue and I thought I was just in a really argumentative book club. Turns out the group was started by a former college debate captain and 80 percent of the meetings were just people fighting over themes and character choices.

3 comments

3 Comments

kevin_carr2mo ago

Yeah but actually the whole "80 percent of meetings" thing makes me wonder if you were just keeping track or if that's an estimate. I mean I get it, I've been in groups where the arguing takes over and you start to wonder why you even showed up. It's funny though because a lot of book clubs I've heard about actually do turn into debate sessions even when they don't mean to. Plot holes are kind of unavoidable in any book so I think the real problem was the group didn't set any ground rules for how to talk about them without it turning into a fight. Still, six months is a long time to stick around before figuring it out so you must have liked the people enough to keep coming back.

olivers2829d ago

Yeah the "must have liked the people enough" part is spot on lol. I had a similar group and what worked for us was just taking 5 minutes at the start to agree on one topic to focus on, saved a ton of arguing.

jackson.jenny2mo ago

So wait, you're telling me I could've just Googled "is my book club secretly a debate team" and saved myself six months of getting roasted over character motivations? Honestly sounds like a nightmare, hope the snacks were good at least.