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Realized my book club debates were too shallow because we kept skipping the author's notes
I always thought the author's notes at the end were just fluff, but last month our club read "The House in the Cerulean Sea" and I forced everyone to read the 3-page afterword before the debate. Huge difference - suddenly we had concrete quotes about Klune's inspirations instead of just vague opinions. It changed the whole discussion for 8 out of 12 members. Has anyone else tried using the author's notes as a debate starting point?
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zarak182d ago
It's like how nobody reads the assembly instructions for furniture and then blames the company when the shelf falls down. You've got all this context sitting right there in the author's notes that explains why a character acts a certain way or why the plot went in that direction, but people treat it like spoilers or something. I noticed the same thing with cookbooks too, people skip the headnotes and then complain the recipe didn't turn out like the picture.
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robert_bennett292d ago
Hold up, I actually think skipping the author's notes is what keeps debates honest. If you read Klune's afterword, you're just getting his filtered perspective instead of letting the book speak for itself.
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