Rant: Our book club meeting turned into a full blown argument about a fictional character's taxes

Honestly, last Thursday at the library, we were discussing a mystery novel set in 1920s Chicago. Tbh, someone pointed out the main character inherited a huge house but never seemed to pay property tax. Ngl, this spiraled for 45 minutes, with half the group insisting it was a plot hole and the other half yelling 'it's fiction, who cares!'. Has your club ever gotten that heated over a tiny, ridiculous detail?

3 comments

3 Comments

william_henderson1mo ago

Get why that would happen. Those small details build the world though. If a character in a story about money never pays a bill, it breaks the feeling. It makes the whole setting feel fake. My group spent twenty minutes once on how a spaceship had artificial gravity but no one ever fixed a leaky pipe. It matters.

wilson.kelly1mo ago

Oh, the glamour of a book club debate! Next you'll be forming rival factions over whether a fictional detective remembered to feed his cat. Honestly, that tax argument sounds more gripping than the actual plot.

janac221mo ago

Seriously though, why does it matter? It's a made up story about a made up person. Getting that worked up over tax logic in a mystery book sounds exhausting. The point is the plot and the characters, not their fake accounting. Don't you read to escape this kind of boring real life stuff?