Can we talk about the member who brought a printed 40 page rebuttal to a fiction pick

Last month our group picked a short mystery novel and this one guy shows up with a binder. Not joking, 40 pages of printed notes, color coded, with footnotes. He spent the first 25 minutes going through every plot hole line by line. We were at the back room of a coffee shop in Austin and the barista actually came over to ask if we needed a table for a conference. The worst part is when someone tried to say the book was just meant to be fun, he said, and I quote, "Fun is a lazy excuse for weak structure." Nobody talked for a solid minute after that. Our host finally had to set a 5 minute timer for each person just to get through the night. Has anyone else had a member who turned a casual discussion into a thesis defense? How do you shut that down without making them quit the group?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_claire3d ago

That binder story hit different for me. I used to think the more prepared someone was, the better the discussion would be. Color coded notes sounded like dedication, not a red flag. But seeing it written out like that, with the barista coming over and the dead silence after the fun comment, I get it now. Preparation stops being helpful when it turns into a performance instead of a conversation. The 5 minute timer was honestly the best move, it forces everyone to share the space instead of letting one person own the room.

daniel_cooper342d ago

Color coded notes sounded like dedication" is exactly what I told myself when I brought a highlighted copy of a cookbook to a food memoir pick. Turns out people don't want a timeline of every time the author mentioned pancakes. I think the timer thing works, but also I've found that just staring at your coffee really hard until they trail off is a solid backup plan. I've definitely been that person who turned a book club into my personal TED talk, so I get the cringe from both sides.