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?

That would be one spoddy book club 🤓

We just drink wine and gossip at mine and then say ‘did anyone like the book?’ just as we’re leaving.

I view the questions as an attempt by the publisher to increase the popularity of the book by suggesting it should be a book club read, so people talk about it to their friends, in online forums etc, resulting in an increase in sales.
Like you, I consider many of the questions rather patronising. They remind me of being at school in English class.

Certain publishers ask the authors to do this. They can hardly refuse. Maybe it's come from some book groups not knowing what to discuss?

If it can help some people, I can't see the harm. Ultimately books aim at a wide audience and surely that's a good thing?

Same with descriptions/notes in museums, etc. An expert might find them trivial or simplistic but others may not.

I don’t think I can quite match the temperature of your post op but I agree that they spoil the final impressions of a good book, like an absent minded fistful of Pringles after a lovely wine.

I read a book the other day by a basically unknown author.
At the end he'd asked people to please leave a review, fair enough. But then added suggestions as to what you might write about in the review! That went too far for me, so I didn't leave one 😂

"Why do you think the author chose to have the boy wearing a green t-shirt on the day he saw the dog on the bus?"

How the fuck am I supposed to know and what in the name of fuck makes you think I'd care.

"Why did you choose this book?"

Because it was 99p on the kindle daily deals list and reviews were saying it was unputdownable and hilarious. They were wrong, I'm putting it right down and my face didn't crack once. TF I didn't pay any more.

I hear you @LookAtMyTinyGameBoy and share or possibly exceed your rage.

They are so patronising. I was always dubious of book groups but the street I moved to has one and it's been great. But somehow we manage to decide what books to read without having 'a great book club read' rammed down our throats, and we each manage to share our thoughts and impressions of the book without being guided by an annoying list of questions. I totally judge a book if they are at the end but, happily, don't come across too many.

Objectively, you're absolutely right. A little bit of clearly-signposted optional extra content that may be appreciated by someone who wants to use it to reflect on what they've read, or which can be used to kick off or facilitate discussion of the book in a book group, and which those who aren't interested can simply ignore, is a nice, harmless thing that no reasonable person could object to.

I, however, am not a reasonable person. And judging by this thread, I am not alone 🥳🎉🥳

I think there's a difference between accessible and patronising, though. IMO this one I've uploaded (I re-borrowed the book from the library just now, purely to take this screenshot 🤣), the one about flotsam and jetsam I mentioned earlier, crosses the line.

Yeah, not everyone is going to have encountered and remembered the exact technical meanings of those words and the distinction between them. But having the question just assume not only that I'll need to look it up (or will need to have it read out to me by teacher the appointed book club member), but that it's their place to tell me to consult the definition is almost infantilising.

If a book club planned on using these prompts, I'm sure members would be quite capable of looking up those words before the meeting all by themselves if they felt they needed to, or gauging in the meeting whether everyone seems to be on the same page, or speaking up if there's a term they don't understand and asking if someone can explain, or offering to look it up and read out the definition if anyone wants them to. And the meaning would likely be part of the discussion anyway, so people would pick it up. They're adults who read and discuss books for fun. I'm sure they have ways of managing when they meet unfamiliar words.

The last time somebody preemptively instructed me to look up definitions on the assumption that a) I wouldn't know the words and b) I needed to be directly instructed to consult a reference, I was probably about eight, and in the process of learning how to look things up. The tone feels pretty similar IMO 😂

BTW apologies for the verbosity — I haven't slept for two nights and have doubled up on my stimulant meds… I know I'm typing too much, but I can't work out how to be more succinct right now 😳

Not to mention another bleeping annoying book related cringe, when you look up book reviews to gauge a books appeal, and some numpty says,
‘I can only give the book 2 stars, as it arrived late and the packaging had a rip in it!’
🙄

@LookAtMyTinyGameBoy while I totally understand your ire at having being told to look up words, and while I understand the phrase flotsam and jetsam, your post makes me realise I am not familiar with the exact distinction between them. So you have prompted me to look them up and I’ve learnt something new today. So really your rant was an educational public service announcement 😂

I'm not one for violence but I'd make an exception for whoever wrote that bit you've screenshotted @LookAtMyTinyGameBoy .

Screenshotted looks odd.

Then there's people who post reviews and answer questions simply because an automated email prompt asked them to, and have nothing of value to say.

Q: Is this the British edition or the American one?
A: Sorry, I don't know how to tell.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Haven't read it
Bought for my niece for her birthday next week.

Yeah, it's one of those things that pops up as an entire fossilised phrase every so often, where a good enough idea of the meaning kind of sinks in via contextual clues without having to look it up, and which you'd probably have to have actively looked up at some point in your life to have encountered the precise technical meaning (which is almost never needed). I must've looked it up at some point, no idea when or why.

What makes it trickier IMO is that we have so many legal doublets that have entered our general language where both parts of the phrase are pretty much synonyms, like "ways and means", "cease and desist", "aid and abet", "will and testament", "fit and proper", "all and sundry", stuff like that — so I'd guess that when we read something that sounds like an archaic legal team with two parts, we're kind of preconditioned to guess that both words probably mean pretty much the same thing.

I get why the question writers think there's a good chance many people won't have ever had cause to investigate the exact meanings before — I just think they could credit adults with the gumption to realise for themselves that they'll need to know the meaning of each word to engage with the prompt.

It looks odd to me, too.

But I can't think how else you'd do it. At least it's not "I text him last week" levels of odd.

We live in a brave new world. So many new verbs that need creating. So many dodgy-looking inflections.

I was at an author talk once where she admitted she thought the questions at the end of one of her books were really stupid!

At least it's not "I text him last week" levels of odd.

I know someone who does this. I don't understand why because she is otherwise good with grammar. "Sarah text". It doesn't bloody mean anything.

I've no doubt I'm considered old and behind the times by some for not keeping up and accepting wrongly words without question.

Maybe because it already looks/sounds a bit like a past tense, some people instinctively feel more comfortable leaving it as it is than adding "another" -ed?

Edit to add: I've also heard another variant (though not seen it written) — it sounds something like "I tex-id him last week" (two syllables). I don't think they're just eliding the t in "texted" to make it easier to say; it sounds more like that's how they're forming the past tense. Maybe it's because the t tends to get dropped from "text" (either present tense or noun) so they're subconsciously thinking of it as "I tex, I will tex, I tex-id".

Oh bloody hell, that's far too much of a headfuck for me to cope with@LookAtMyTinyGameBoy 😒

And wrong.

Totally agree and I’m an English teacher and spend most of my day asking questions about texts. They’re very generic and pointless questions- surely a book group discussion should arise out of what people found interesting/ confusing/annoying/ thought provoking.

You're not helping 🤣 I'm trying really really hard to keep my inner prescriptivist locked up in her cage where she belongs, and adopt an open and curious attitude towards linguistic innovati—

No. I can't do it. You're right. It's wrong. So wrong. 🤣😅

I’m an author and my US publisher made me write these. Practically cringed myself inside out but what can you do?

I’ve never known an author to have had to do their own book club questions! Did your UK publisher just provide some?

Mortifying. Isn't there some kind of law on cruelty to authors?

No idea, they are laughably bad though.