That book club leader who said 'skip the classics' was completely wrong

My book club leader told us to stop reading old stuff like Austen and Dostoevsky because nobody gets them anymore. I pushed back hard and made us read Pride and Prejudice anyway. Half the group ended up loving it more than any of the modern novels we'd done in the last year. Has anyone else had a club leader push lazy opinions that killed good discussions?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew_park9d ago

Jumped right in to back you up on this, because my book club had the exact same fight last year. Our leader tried to ban anything written before 2000, saying classics were "too dense" for modern readers. I pushed back and we ended up doing The Great Gatsby as a compromise, and @joel603 was right about how a little give and take makes all the difference. We actually replaced her with a rotating leader system after that, and now we mix in a classic every third month with way better discussions than when she picked everything.

joel6039d ago

Pull your leader aside before the meeting and suggest a compromise. Tell them you'll try one of their modern picks if they'll give the classics a fair shot next time. My old club had the same problem until we started alternating old and new books on a schedule. It kept everyone happy and stopped one person from running the whole show.

mark_thomas8d ago

Jumped in to say this is exactly what worked for my group too. We had one guy who only wanted to read hard sci-fi and wouldn't budge until I asked him to trade off with me. I agreed to read his weird space opera if he gave Jane Eyre a real chance next round. Turned out he hated it, but he respected the deal enough to keep alternating with me after that. Now we've got a schedule where it's two modern picks then one classic, and nobody complains about the old stuff because they know their turn is coming. It really does stop that one person from taking over completely.