To be annoyed with book club and need advice!

[TeaAndBrie]

I go to a local book club, it’s run at a local cake shop after hours by the owner and her daughter (grown up).
we have been doing this for about a year and there are normally 8-10 people attend.

One of the attendees always ends up going off topic and he always ends up talking about film versions instead of the book and then about tv and then actors completely unrelated. It’s getting really tiring.
Has anyone attended an enjoyable book club and can make some suggestions that I could politely bring up to try and make it more focused?

Maybe speak to the cake shop owner and see if she feels the same? And if so, she might moderate the discussion.

If you’re the only one this bothers perhaps this won’t be the club for you.

This is why I no longer go, trying to discuss Pride & Prejudice and someone going on about Dripping Darcy. Nope not in the book......

Choose a book with no film version?

You need someone to actively moderate. They say ‘Now, Phyllis, we’re not discussing the film adaptation, and whether you find Vigo Mortensen attractive. Ok, what did people think of Character X/the portrayal of a police force with magic/ the divisive plot twist in Ch 30?’

I’m not sure how helpful this would be but I stopped going to a book club because I ended up being the only one who’d read the whole book. Some would have only read the first part and then would say that discussing the ending would spoil it for them.

This may be the time when being direct is the most polite. Say that the book club is much less interesting when people talk about things that aren’t in the book. This may feel uncomfortable but realistically you are going to stop going if you don’t say anything.

Choose books where there's no film.

I’ve been in a few book groups and in my experience it is rare for the whole meeting to be confined to discussion of the book. Some are worse than others for doing the book really quickly and then moving on to general chat, but I’ve never attended one that didn’t move into general chat at some point.

I have also rarely been in any group of people socially or professionally where there wasn’t at least one individual who was unable to stay on topic, or who dominated the conversation, or whose main focus of interest was themselves.

You can look for other groups that are more to your liking, but the older I get, the easier I find it to (politely) intervene when someone’s rabbiting on and refocus the discussion.

Haha yep we’ve had that with a different book, it’s so annoying!
I have already spoken to the owner and she has said that other people are annoyed with it but tbh she’s just as bad!

Oh we’ve tried this but it just gets compared to a similar plot in a film instead!

That’s good advice, we take it in turns to chair and I always try and keep things on track but it’s hard to not feel like you’re taking over!

Oh god, that sounds incredibly annoying. I think that you probably need a new group. I can't stand when people won't stay on topic, why bother in the first place if you can't focus on what you've been reading!?

This is so annoying, we had it recently that people hadn’t finished so we couldn’t discuss the ending!
I wonder if you’re right, I will stop going if it stays annoying so May as well speak now or forever hold my peace!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have assumed you are a woman. The culprit is a man. I go to an all female book group, it's always pleasant and everyone gets an equal turn to speak. Nobody hijacks the chat. Maybe the man is the problem...

You all sounds like my kind of people who understand what a book club should involve - maybe we should start our own 😀

yep I am female.
I do often wonder if the film talk is to deflect from them not reading the book or finishing it perhaps

Your job as chair is to shut up the monologuers, though, and open out the discussion from one irrelevant topic. Or whoever is chair at that session could hold up a card printed with Mr Bennet’s immortal line from Pride and Prejudice:

YOU HAVE DELIGHTED US LONG ENOUGH.

YES! This would be amazing!
i wish I had the balls to do that 😂

are you friends with anyone in the group outside book club?

I am actually quite blunt and last time I chaired I suggested quite loudly that perhaps he could start a spin off film club instead. Unfortunately he just laughed and started talking about Fight club😳

Are book clubs really just about talking about books? I always thought they were just an opportunity for people with similar interests to socialise - not like a GCSE English Lit class.
To me talking about a film/tv version of a book doesn't sound odd.

Not directly, one of the women’s husbands is friends with my husband but no one that we socialise with

I'm in a book club and one of our members regularly doesn't finish the book. The first time she did this and announced that we couldn't talk about the ending she was told very clearly that that's not OK. If she didn't read the whole book, fine, but the rest of us did and were going to talk about it.

do you get the idea that the other 8/10 people are frustrated too?

A friend's daughter was in a book club that met in the local pub. Friend asked daughter what book they were currently reading and the reply was that they didn't actually read any books; they just called it a book club to justify going to the pub.😂

I agree that it should be relaxed and the conversation should be able to flow and other interests can be discussed. However with this individual everything has to be related to a film. So for example we did ‘the girl on the train’ and we were talking about the importance of the setting and the glimpse of the house from the train. They kept talking about the big gardens and houses and several of us had to keep saying that the book was set in London but the film is very different as it’s in America. Despite that he kept talking about the film version