Books That Unite or Divide Us

By FPL_Sheri

I just spent a lovely evening with friends discussing a book that elicited a variety of strong feelings in most of us. A book chosen because it was “fluff” had us addicted, revolted, disgusted, adoring and laughing for over two hours. And we had a variety of reasons for our feelings. Some of us loved laughing at the horrible plot, the mixing of genres from historical to dystopian and several in between. Some hated the writing style, the depiction of women, the lack of character depth, etc. And yet most of us read several books in the series, we just had to know how things turned out. Some loved the coming of age story and how the main character developed. Many were disappointed by where the story went, but kept reading. We were divided in our opinions of this book, but the discussion united us.

This discussion had me thinking of the irony that we enjoyed discussing this book so much with our very different points of view. I thought of so many discussions that turn nasty because participants don’t agree. Yet this discussion was comfortable and jovial while discussing the same type of topics, but from a different setting, a book about fluff. It reinforced to me the importance of reading and talking in relaxed settings. Sometimes talking about the non-important things really has a way of helping us think about the important things.