It hit me after our last book club: why do we only debate endings?

My book club read '1984' last month. Everyone argued about the ending a lot. But I mean, idk, I think the middle parts are more key. We talked so much about Big Brother that we skipped Winston's slow change. Those daily struggles show how control works. I wish we debated that more. Maybe it's just my group.

3 comments

3 Comments

quinnr584d ago

My brother's copy of The Shining had coffee stains on chapter five.

brooke_wells204d ago

So you're saying the stains are like proof that chapter five actually got to him? Those middle chapters where the dread builds are where a book becomes a real object you interact with, not just words. The spine cracks and the pages get messed up right where the story digs its claws in. It's kind of cool that you can see where a reader got stuck in, just from a coffee ring or a bent page.

rayl544d ago

Seriously, I heard a professor on a podcast say we fixate on endings because they're the last thing we experience. But the meat of any story is in those slow middle parts, where characters actually change. Talking only about the final page misses the whole point.