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TIL my book club's obsession with the 'correct' ending cost me $35
I got into a debate in my online book club about the ending of a popular thriller. Everyone was arguing over whether the author meant the ending to be ambiguous or not. So I spent $35 on a supplemental analysis book from a small press to settle it. Turns out the author just wrote it that way because they ran out of page space... now the club is split on whether the analysis book is even accurate. Has anyone else bought extra resources to win a book debate and regretted it?
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wendy8201mo ago
Oh man, I did the exact same thing with a sci-fi series. Dropped like 40 bucks on a companion guide just to prove everyone wrong about the timeline and it turned out the author just made it up as they went. Still bitter about it honestly.
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the_leo1mo ago
The Lord of the Rings appendices saved me on that front. I spent a whole weekend cross-referencing dates of events across three different editions of the books, and it turned out the third edition had a typo that screwed everything up. Honestly, once I realized the author was just winging it in the first book anyway, I felt a lot better about my own messy notes. Tbh, sometimes you just gotta laugh at yourself and move on.
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karencampbell1mo ago
The $35 analysis book for The Silent Patient taught me more about narrative structure than the actual novel did. Actually I think buying extra resources is the smart move if you care about getting the facts straight. My book club spent three months fighting over whether the ending of Gone Girl was feminist or not and I pulled out a critical essay collection that shut down the whole debate. If the analysis book is from a small press it probably has better editing than the original novel anyway. Most authors do plan their endings carefully but publishers rush them sometimes so the supplemental material fills in the gaps. Maybe your club just needs to admit that the analysis book is the authority here and move on to finding the next book to argue about.
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