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Our club picked 'The Great Gatsby' over 'Moby Dick' for our classic novel month, and I think we made a huge mistake.
While everyone loved the glitz and the prose, I argued that 'Moby Dick's' dense, weird chapters about whale anatomy and philosophy would have sparked way more debate than the now-standard 'Is Gatsby tragic or just a creep?' discussion we had for 45 minutes.
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nancy5241mo agoMost Upvoted
My book club did Gatsby last year and, like @jakeb25 said, we ran out of things to say fast.
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james_kim22d ago
Did you ever bring up the whale chapters at the meeting? I bet @nancy524 would have jumped on that since her group also hit a wall with Gatsby. A whole book club session trying to figure out if the whale was evil or just a whale sounds way more fun than debating whether a rich guy who throws parties is a good person or not.
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Yeah, the "standard Gatsby discussion" line hits hard... we did the same thing in my old book club. You get maybe twenty minutes on the green light and then it's just people calling him a stalker for the hundredth time. A chapter on whale blubber as a metaphor for obsession would have at least been something new to talk about.
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