Unpopular opinion: our club stopped picking bestsellers and it changed everything

For six months we just read whatever was popular on the bestseller list, and our talks were pretty flat. Last month we let each person pick a book under 200 pages that no one else had read. The debate about a weird short story collection, 'Her Body and Other Parties', got so loud the cafe manager asked us to quiet down. People actually fought about the themes instead of just saying if they liked it or not. Has your group ever tried ditching the obvious picks to get better arguments?

2 comments

2 Comments

lilyo3020d ago

Getting so loud the manager had to step in is the best book club review I've ever heard. My group's biggest fight was over whether the free cookies were oatmeal raisin or chocolate chip (a betrayal, honestly). Maybe we need to pick a book that's actually about something.

coleman.jade20d ago

Ever try a book so weird you have to read parts out loud just to prove it's real? Our group picked this old sci-fi thing with sentient algae, and the plot was so bonkers we spent the whole night just trying to explain it to each other. Sometimes a bad, confusing book is way more fun to talk about than a good one.