Watch out for how book club debates shift after someone brings up the author's background

I noticed a big change in my group last month when someone mentioned the author's political views before we even started talking about the plot. Suddenly nobody wanted to defend the book, and the whole vibe went from excited to awkward in like 10 minutes. Has anyone else seen the tone of a debate totally flip because of outside info like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

logan2636d ago

My buddy Mark runs a sci-fi book club over in Portland and the same thing happened with "Ender's Game" last year. Someone brought up Orson Scott Card's political stuff right as they were passing the chips around, and Mark said the room went dead quiet for a solid thirty seconds. A few people admitted they still loved the book but felt weird saying it out loud, while others started pointing out flaws in the writing they'd never mentioned before. By the end of the meeting, half the group was arguing about the author's Twitter feed instead of the actual plot about kids in space. Isn't it funny how we can't just separate the art from the artist anymore without it turning into a whole thing?

faith_torres835d ago

My book club had the exact same thing blow up over Harry Potter last spring.