Our book club went from polite nods to shouting matches in under a year

We started this small fiction group last March, mostly friends from my neighborhood in Austin. At first everyone just agreed the book was 'nice' and we passed the hummus around. Then last month, someone called The Great Gatsby 'overrated garbage' and another person literally stood up to defend it like it was their child. Now half the group refuses to sit next to each other during meetings. Has any other club had a book totally split the room like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew_sanchez9410d ago

Wait someone actually stood up during a book club meeting? Like physically stood up from their chair to defend Gatsby? That is wild lmao. I can picture the hummus getting knocked over and everything. Honestly I feel like The Great Gatsby is one of those books that people either love or hate so much it turns into a personal attack. Your group went from polite nods to full on battlefield in just a year, that's honestly kind of impressive for a fiction book club.

matthewross9d ago

Andrew, you nailed it with "polite nods to full on battlefield." That is exactly what happened to our club when we read "The Catcher in the Rye" last year. One lady said Holden Caulfield was just a whiny rich kid and another guy got so red in the face defending him I thought we'd have to call an ambulance. We had three people walk out mid discussion and two of them still don't speak to each other at the grocery store. It is wild how a book from the 50s can still split a room like that.