Those fucking book club questions at the end of books

[LookAtMyTinyGameBoy]

Not posting in AIBU as I know damn well I'm being unreasonable because I could just choose not to read them. But somehow I feel compelled to, even knowing how wrist-gnawingly banal, patronising and superficial they've been every time I've come across a book that has them, and how they'll potentially spoil whatever last impressions and thoughts the book left me with, by making me feel like I'm back at junior school answering comprehension questions.

When I say "patronising", just one example: a question at the end of a book I just finished instructed the reader to look up the definitions of a couple of words which were used in the book as names for particular tech widgets, and then think about why those words might have been chosen. Cause it definitely wouldn't have occurred to me to look them up myself before answering the question, if I didn't happen to know. (Which I did, because it was "flotsam" and "jetsam", which might not be the kind of thing you can just assume someone will have happened to come across, but it's not some arcane terminology beyond the ken of any common reader.)

And… well, every time I come across these crappy book club questions at the end of a book, even something I enjoyed or thought was interesting or clever or elegant, somehow my brain immediately tries to bump it across into an "okay so basically like Jodi Picoult then" category, because that's where I first came across them. Just having book club questions there does something strange to my perception of genre, quality etc. even when I've just read the bloody thing.

Does anyone else hate these questions/suggested discussion topics, but find themselves unable to stop reading when the book ends?

I am completely with you. It takes me out of the book and makes me feel like I picked something from Richard and Judy’s book club. And yet I will still always look at the questions!

Why are they so irresistible?!

I don't mind them. I have a degree in English literature so they are usually fairly basic for me. I'm in a local book club, however, and they are really good at prompting members who have not studied literature at all at school (or a very long time ago) to start thinking critically about what we read, in a way that doesn't feel intimidating to them. They're just starting points. Nothing stops you doing a deeper analysis if you want.

The flotsam and jetsom question could be quite interesting as there's no obvious link to technology.

If I ever write a book I will just ask one question.

Why are you looking for questions? Behave!

Yeah Elephants but explicitly telling a bunch of adults to go and look up the definitions of the words first, so that they will be able to answer the question? I feel like they're going to start instructing me in the safe use of round-ended scissors.

The questions are not important, they are just a starting point for people who want to discuss the book, to get them past the "where shall we start" moment and give the wine time to kick in.

I attended a book group when I visited a friend in Florida and the questions from the end of the book had been typed out and were handed round so everyone had one, and we all had to speak. So the questions encouraged participation.

I hate them. too. These books always feel back-to-front: as if the author dreamed up the questions first and then wrote the book to fit.
It doesn't feel like an artist expressing themselves. It feels like some publishing house said, "we need a book on this topic, go and write it. With buzzwords, please."

I'm not looking for a full-on supervision grilling me on the finer points of literary theory as they relate to whatever I've just read. Just having questions there at all disrupts my own post-novel haze, because my own lack of self-control means I read the questions that weren't put there for me but for the scenario you describe, and I start thinking about whatever they're telling me to think about.

Part of why it's so annoying is that I have only myself to blame.

I especially detest the ones that say "How would you feel if you found out you were a wizard?" after reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I made this up, but it characterises the bottom-feeding thinking (sic) that goes into so many book club questions.

They rarely engage with ideas or writing methods.

"Where shall we start" is always aimed at the nominator: "why did you choose this book?"

Any proposed book group book that comes with its own questions is a hard pass for me. The fun is that the book proposer gets to write and ask their own.

I veer towards classics or non fiction which is one way of making sure this can't happen.

But they never have anything to do with English literature!

They are usually the sorts of questions designed for people who didn't understand English Lit at school, and who will complain 'I don't like analysing books, it spoils them'.

Typically there is at least one question that shows the person who wrote the questions is of the 'literature exists to teach us moral lessons' school of thought. These make me want to hurl.

But those questions are the polar opposite of literary theory, which assumes you understand what you’ve just read, and will engage with style, ideas, contexts, ideology etc.

Those book club questions are just fucking banal. My copy of Normal People asks who the reader has more sympathy for, Connell or Marianne, and why mightn’t Connell want his school friends to know they’re sleeping together.

@senua — the author doesn’t write the questions!

Agreed.

I don’t see these very often. I wonder if that’s because I usually read on a Kindle?

I have never studied English Lit and neither have any of the women in my group so we do tend to use the themes of the book as jumping off points for more generalised discussions rather than delving into detailed analysis of the text.

The market for novels would be very small if they could only be enjoyed by people with English degrees!

And thirded,
I have only seen them in one book, my reaction was - what a load of bollocks

Maybe because I read my books on a Kindle but I haven't come across this.
But how patronising! My old book group only read female authors, and we had no problem discussing a book - no prompting required! I certainly read books I wouldn't normally (Precious by Sapphire being one), and it was so interesting how these women, of very diverse backgrounds, understood and took from the books. Having ready made questions makes it like a classroom exercise.

I had a quote fail, sorry. What I was trying to say is that while the questions might annoy me with their superficiality and cringiness, my dislike for book club question lists isn't because I was hoping for questions involving deep searching technical literary theory either. I don't want any questions. Which makes my compulsion to read the sodding things all the more baffling.

It's like end credits. When I've watched a film or a TV episode, I like to watch the credits, especially if it was something thought-provoking or emotional or that otherwise leaves me with a lingering mental state or train of thought. I very much dislike it when the film draws to a close on the ruined, body-littered landscape and the haunted face of a man who's betrayed everything he ever stood for because blah blah blah, and you get about a picosecond of the carefully-chosen credit music before some over-coked twat is yelling at you about when to watch Britain's Strictly Fucking On Ice.

@Marmose the main place I come across them is in ebooks I've borrowed from the library. Books I buy myself, whether downloaded or paper, seem to be less likely to have them, though there's the odd one. My guess would be that it's probably more to do with genre and/or original publication date than format.

This is why I like a good old traditional book.
Hate the book club questions, why not just keep them on the authors website!

It's sheer arrogance, the assumption that this book is good/worthy enough to be a book club choice.

Yes they really annoy me, I feel compelled to read them and then patronised! And when I saw the title, the first thing I thought of was Jodi Picoult 😖

Is this a thing? I see it in DS’s school book band books, I’ve never seen it in an adult book. I would be a bit insulted tbh, it does sound like they are checking your reading comprehension!

I’m not really reading “book club” books though - mostly non-fiction or historical books, and mostly on Kindle.

I'm certainly not in any position to lecture on the foolishness of looking at this end-of-book content, because I seem to spend my life seeking out stuff that enrages me and then getting enraged. But I think that I have honestly only ever stumbled on these 'book club questions' once or twice in my whole life.

Is it because I often read on a Kindle, which makes it less likely that these pages come in front of my eyes? Is it because I don't often read books that publishers decide to create this content for (no idea which books get singled out for it) or am I better at filtering non-essential pages from my brain?

It may be that I am better at this: when I was a teenager I had to take myself in hand because I was making myself miserable by imagining that I had to read the author's preface, author's preface to the second edition, author's preface to the third edition, prologue, introduction, note on placenames, etc, etc before I was 'allowed' to start the book.

Now I wear blinkers and can only see the proper meat of any book, not the greasy wrapping paper round it.