I finally realized my book club was reading the wrong genre for years

Our group spent 6 years on literary fiction and deep dramas until a member brought 'Project Hail Mary' to our last meeting in May. Everyone was actually laughing and debating plot points instead of forcing deep symbolism talks. Anyone else ever switch genres and realize your group was stuck in a rut?

2 comments

2 Comments

webb.val27d ago

Spit out my coffee when you said SIX YEARS on literary fiction. That's basically a prison sentence for people who actually enjoy reading. My old book club did that with "The Goldfinch" and I swear half the members faked having read it just to escape the three-hour discussions about what the bird symbolized. We finally swapped to hard sci-fi and mystery thrillers and now people actually show up sober. Our last meeting had someone arguing that the science in "The Martian" was totally doable and another person fact-checking him on their phone mid-argument. You guys made it way longer than we did - we cracked at the two year mark when someone brought "Jurassic Park" and we realized we could talk about dinosaurs instead of generational trauma.

felix_jones26d ago

My book club actually started with literary fiction and I was one of those people who thought it made us look smart. Then we tried "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch as a joke and suddenly everyone was showing up on time. Our last meeting about "Project Hail Mary" had someone actually doing math on a napkin to see if the astrophysics worked. You're right, the dinosaur argument sounds way more fun than arguing about whether the goldfinch is hope or despair. I think I've been converted.