Annotation glossary debate got heated over one word
Last month my club read a dense sci-fi novel and I brought a glossary I made for the tech terms. One member flipped because I defined 'quantum entanglement' as just 'weird connection' and said I was dumbing it down too much. We spent 45 minutes arguing about how much context a glossary should give, and it split the group like half and half. Has anyone else had a simple reading aid cause a bigger fight than the book itself?
Oh man, that sounds exhausting. Honestly, a whole 45 minutes over one glossary entry, that's rough, but I get why everyone got so fired up. Hope your next book club pick has way less jargon, or at least that everyone can agree to disagree without it turning into a whole thing.
Is a glossary supposed to tell you the whole story, or just jog your memory? The member was right to push back, because if you're reading a sci-fi novel, 'weird connection' skips over the whole point of why the tech matters to the plot. A quick note on how it works, even two sentences, saves everyone from having to look it up mid-chapter and keeps the shared reading experience honest.