Our club's pick got torn apart by a retired English teacher and it saved our whole format
We used to spend 90 minutes just saying we liked a book and moving on, until a retired teacher named Donna at our Tuesday meetup in Portland asked why nobody had mentioned the ending for 20 minutes straight. Now we open with one person playing devil's advocate for 10 minutes before anyone gets to say a nice thing, and our attendance went from 5 people to 14. Does anyone else have a member who basically runs the group without meaning to?
Ngl having one person rip every pick apart first would kill the vibe for me, some of us just want to talk about what we loved without defending it first. A group where you have to earn the right to say something nice sounds exhausting, not fun.