Spent $50 on a book club debate guide and it totally backfired

I bought this official debate kit for our book club's discussion on 'The Midnight Library' thinking it would save us time, but it just made everyone argue about the questions instead of the book. Has anyone else wasted cash on a prepackaged discussion set that killed the vibe?

3 comments

3 Comments

jason1121mo ago

Full honesty, those debate guides can actually save a book club from turning into just people nodding along and agreeing about everything. The whole point of a good discussion is to challenge each other's takes, and structured questions force you to look at parts of the book you might have glossed over. Maybe the issue with The Midnight Library is that the themes are already pretty personal and emotional, so a rigid guide feels like putting training wheels on a bike that's already moving. Coffee symbolism in a mystery novel sounds like exactly the kind of offbeat detour that makes the night memorable, not a waste. If everyone just gave the guide a fair chance and stuck with it, the disagreements could've led to a deeper talk about the author's choices instead of just surface level stuff.

bethcarr3mo ago

Oh totally, the_kim, you nailed it. That coffee order thing sounds exactly like what happened with us. Those debate guides are like throwing a grenade into a room full of people who already have opinions. Instead of talking about the book's main themes or the character's journey, we got stuck on whether the questions were biased or if the author of the guide even read the same book we did. It's like the whole point is to get people thinking, but it ends up being a fight over the framework itself. I swear, some of those kits are designed by people who've never actually been in a chatty, wine-fueled book club. They just overcomplicate everything and kill the natural flow of a good discussion.

the_kim3mo ago

Did you guys end up circling back to the book at all, or was it just a full-on debate club? I once bought a set of fancy discussion cards for a mystery novel and people spent the whole time arguing about whether the detective's coffee order was a clue or just a character quirk. We never even got to the actual plot twist because everyone was too busy interpreting caffeine symbolism. So yeah, I feel your pain on that $50 gamble.