That moment I realized I was reading book club books all wrong

Two months ago at my neighborhood book club in Austin, someone asked what I thought about the symbolism in the book we just read. I froze because I never even looked for symbols, I just read the story. The host laughed and said she spends whole chapters just mapping out themes and metaphors. That's when it hit me that I've been reading books like a kid for years, just following the plot. Has anyone else had that wake up call where you realized you were missing half the book?

2 comments

2 Comments

burns.richard1mo ago

Two years ago I felt exactly the same way about Moby Dick.

riverm481mo ago

I remember reading somewhere that Moby Dick was originally published in three volumes, and a lot of the early reviews called it a boring, overly long whale encyclopedia. I think people forget that Melville wrote it during a time when whaling was already starting to get phased out by oil lamps and other stuff. So the whole book, @burns.richard, is basically a eulogy for an industry nobody cared about anymore. That's why it feels so outdated and hard to get through for most people today.