Sunday, July 20, 2014

Book Club: Gone Girl

Daily Hours: 2
Total Hours: 125

For this month’s book club we read the sensational and polarizing psychological thriller Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I had avoided reading the book up until now because I saw it as one of those hot new “I haven’t read a book in 15 years but I loved Girl with a Dragon Tattoo!” type of phenomena. 

I had the idea to start the discussion off by showing the two new trailers for the movie version, which comes out in October.  It was interesting to see how novel they thought the idea of showing the trailers was, something I hadn’t thought twice about.  On a related note, they weren’t really that open to the idea of meeting somewhere else  when Lori, the group leader, brought up maybe meeting at a near-by coffee shop, which goes to show that the recent trend of off-site book club meeting places doesn’t appeal to every group. 


I think Gone Girl was a good discussion pick because it was so polarizing.  There were a wide variety of opinions on the book, and we all got to have our say.  And speaking of everyone having their say, a great moment happened right at the end of the meeting, when one of the members specifically pointed out that Lori was one of the best book group leaders she had ever had, mentioning how good she was at letting everyone have their turn to talk.  We all clapped and you could tell Lori really appreciated the positive feedback.  And then another member agreed, adding that they all really like hearing what she has to say about the book, and that she should share that more!  Lori responded that she doesn’t usually like to impart too much because she feels like it is the group’s book club, not hers, which I thought was an interesting point of view.  I think striking a balance between facilitating and participating will be an interesting aspect of my (anticipated) future book club duties.

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