Appreciation post: The old book club I used to belong to in Portland

Last fall my book club of 12 years fell apart after a member stormed out over whether we should pick fiction or memoirs for the next read. Nobody could agree on a compromise, and three people left the group chat that same night. Has anyone else had a club split over something this small?

2 comments

2 Comments

reed.ray8h ago

ramirez.caleb said this thing about "the smallest thing being the rock that starts the landslide" and that is exactly right. I read a piece online about how groups like book clubs usually have a lot of tension under the surface that nobody talks about for months. Then something small like fiction versus memoirs comes up and it all comes out at once because everyone has been holding it in. The fight is never really about the book format or the genre. It is about who gets to decide what the group does and who feels like their opinion matters. I think a lot of these groups just run out of steam and the argument is just the excuse to walk away.

ramirez.caleb1d ago

Man I used to roll my eyes at people who got worked up over book club drama, but then my own group fell apart over whether we should do audiobooks versus physical copies. Some people said audiobooks didn't count as reading, others said they were the only way they could keep up, and suddenly we had two camps that wouldn't even look at each other. It wasn't even about the books anymore it was about who was right and who was wrong. That fiction vs memoir argument sounds painful but honestly it shows how much people actually care about the group even if they're bad at showing it. Sometimes the smallest thing is just the rock that starts the whole landslide.