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How my book club went from fighting over fiction to loving non-fiction in just 3 meetings
Last month we read a historical novel and half the group hated it because the facts were wrong. I suggested we try a true crime book next and it shut down every debate we used to have. Now we're on our third non-fiction pick and nobody's raised a voice. What kind of books turned your group around?
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brookekelly20d agoMost Upvoted
Jumped right into narrative non-fiction myself. My group started the same way, fights over historical fiction got brutal. @stone.simon mentioned detective memoirs working better - I'd push back a little on that. We tried a detective memoir and half the people complained the writer was too self-important. What actually fixed everything was true crime books written by forensic experts. No ego, just facts. The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber was a huge hit here. It's funny, it's factual, and nobody can argue about the details because they're all sourced.
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stone.simon20d ago
True crime was smart, detective memoirs work even better since they give you both a story and real police procedure to argue over. We switched to narrative journalism collections like The New Journalism anthologies where each piece is different enough nobody gets bored. Once people stop fighting over what's "true" they start actually discussing the content, which is a much better problem to have.
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