Someone in my book club said 'the footnotes ruin it' and now I cant unsee it

Last Tuesday at our library meeting in St. Paul, a guy mentioned he stopped reading two nonfiction picks because the footnotes felt like homework. I brushed it off until I counted 47 footnotes in a 200 page memoir I was halfway through. Half were jokes or asides, not citations, and suddenly I realized the author kept yanking me out of the story. Our next three selections all have heavy annotation, so now I'm wondering if we should set a club rule about footnote limits or just accept that some readers will tune out. Has anyone else had a pick tank because of constant parenthetical notes or source clutter?

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the_wendy29d ago

Same as buffet menus, too many options and you lose the meal.