Spent $75 on a fancy reading guide for our club and it was a total waste

Our group was reading this dense historical novel and I got talked into buying this special guide that promised deeper analysis and discussion questions. It cost about seventy five bucks and I figured it would help me lead the talk. Honestly, it just gave us all the same basic stuff you could find with a quick online search, but with a lot of extra fluff. The questions it suggested were so obvious they killed the debate before it started, like asking 'how did the setting affect the mood' when we wanted to argue about the main character's choices. I felt pretty dumb for spending that much. Now I just make my own notes and we have way better fights, I mean talks. Has anyone else bought a book club aid that just fell flat?

3 comments

3 Comments

sanchez.sean1d ago

Seventy five bucks for a book club cheat sheet, that's a steep price for some basic questions.

the_wren1d ago

Who actually paid seventy five bucks and what did they get for their money?

elliot_king1d ago

Heard a podcast recently where they talked about how these premium guides are really just repackaged lit class homework from the 90s, nothing new under the sun. You could have spent that $75 on a stack of used books and got more actual conversation fuel. My buddy's group tried one of those "expert" guides for a Faulkner novel and it basically told them what they already figured out after the first chapter. The obvious questions are the killer though, when a guide asks something that flat it shuts down the whole room. Better off saving the cash and letting the group's own dumb arguments drive the discussion.