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Unpopular opinion: I was leading book club meetings all wrong until a member quit over it
I ran our Tuesday night club at the Maple Street library for two years and always opened with my own thoughts first to get things going. Then a member named Dana quit after our November meetup and told me I was basically giving everyone the answers before they could think on their own. Now I open with a question and say nothing for the first ten minutes, and our talks on books like Bel Canto have gotten way better. Anyone else have a hosting habit that seemed fine until somebody called it out?
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bell.harper20d ago
Love how you flipped the whole thing by just sitting there quiet for ten minutes. That silence must feel so awkward at first, right? Like everyone's waiting for you to jump in and save them. I tried something like that with a short story group once, and the first few minutes people just stared at their books. Then somebody finally said something about a scene that bugged them, and boom, everyone had an opinion. The quiet gives people room to actually notice what they felt instead of just agreeing with whoever talks first. Dana did you a weird kind of favor, even if it stung at the time.
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