A book club member told me my analysis was 'too online' and it stung at first

I was in a group discussion about The Road last month and kept comparing it to post-apocalyptic video games. One lady named Carol just said 'you're pulling all your references from screens, not from the text itself.' I got defensive initially but then I actually reread that opening scene about the boy and the father without thinking about Fallout. The language hit way different when I stopped filtering it through other media. Has anyone else gotten feedback that made them realize they were reading through a genre lens instead of just reading?

2 comments

2 Comments

derek_burns1mo ago

Caught myself doing the exact same thing with The Martian last year. Kept waiting for Matt Damon to show up and make a joke about disco music instead of just reading about a guy growing potatoes on Mars. Got called out by a retired botanist in the group who was like "you know this is actually based on real science, right?" Felt about two inches tall. Pretty sure I owe her an apology the next time we meet up.

riverwhite1mo ago

Watch out for the opposite trap though, I had someone tell me I was reading too much into the symbolism when really the author just described a tree. Like there's this weird pressure to prove you're a "real" reader by finding deep meaning in every single line. But sometimes a tree is just a tree, you know? The real trick is figuring out when something IS just straightforward storytelling and when the author actually buried some clues in there. Getting told you're overthinking it can be just as humbling as getting told you're not thinking enough. Makes you question whether you even know how to read properly anymore.

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