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Our book club nearly broke up over a 47 page argument, then we tried a hat and a timer
Two weeks back our group in Cincinnati spent 90 minutes rehashing the same 47 pages of a novel and somehow nobody had finished chapter 6. People were talking over each other, one guy kept reading random quotes out loud, and our host basically gave up on the snack table. So I grabbed a baseball cap from the coat rack and said whoever holds this is the only one allowed to talk, and we set a phone timer for 90 seconds per person. It sounds stupid but the arguing cut way down, we got through three whole chapters of debate in one night, and even the quote guy stayed quiet until it was his turn. Now the hat is called The Speaker Of The House and everyone fights over who gets it first. Has anyone else used a talking stick or timer thing to keep their club from turning into a shouting match, and did it stick after the first few meetings?
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ray_king1mo ago
I used to roll my eyes at stuff like this, figured a talking stick was the kind of thing that works for fifth graders and nobody else. Then my club in Dayton tried the exact same setup, timer and all, after a meeting where two women got into it over a character's motive for a solid hour. We keep a little brass bell now instead of a hat, and the 90 second limit is the part that really does the heavy lifting, since it stops people from rambling. Six months in and it still works, mostly because the timer makes it feel fair instead of personal.
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