Hot take: Our book club's trip to the Powell's City of Books cafe in Portland was a debate killer

We planned a meetup there last month, thinking the vibe would spark great talk about our current read. Instead, for a solid 45 minutes, three separate club members got into a loud, detailed argument about whether the cafe's $6.75 chai latte was worth it compared to the one across the street. We never even opened the book. It felt like the setting totally shifted the focus from the story to petty stuff. Has anyone else had a meetup location completely derail the actual book discussion?

2 comments

2 Comments

loganl222d ago

Oh man, that reminds me of my friend's club. They tried to meet at this new brewery with a "quiet loft." The first twenty minutes were just everyone complaining about the wobbly tables (like, seriously wobbly) and then a huge talk about the best way to stack coasters to fix it. They spent so long on the coaster engineering project that they only talked about the book's main character for, like, two minutes. The location just totally ate the conversation.

vera_campbell2d ago

Learned that lesson the hard way with my own book club, @loganl22. We had a string of bad spots that derailed us. Now we just meet at the same quiet library meeting room every month. It's free, the tables are solid, and there's a coffee machine down the hall. It's boring, but it works. We actually talk about the book now.