Fight Club, the 1996 classic by Chuck Palahniuk, has punched its way to the top to become this month’s reading group choice. A novel about anti-consumerism and knocking bells out of your enemies: clearly a good fit with this month’s theme of defiance. But one question arises immediately: the first rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is also that you don’t talk about fight club. If people take things too seriously, our discussions may be short.

That would be a pity. This promises to be a fascinating book by an intriguing writer. We may be able to look, for instance, at why Palahniuk chose to say that his book was really just an update of the The Great Gatsby. Equally fascinating was his suggestion (in a 2004 introduction) that the book came out of his thinking about self-help groups for men:

… bookstores were full of books like The Joy Luck Club and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and How to Make an American Quilt. These were all novels that presented a social model for women to be together. But there was no novel that presented a new social model for men to share their lives.

That’s an eerie thing to read in 2016. It may be 20 years after the book was first published, but it will seem more pertinent than ever if you believe the theory that many of the far-right and fascist groups that call themselves alt-right emerged from the online “manosphere”. And that’s before we get to all the other controversies the book has produced about violence, and about how seriously the author intended the novel’s ideas to be taken.

There’s also fertile ground for discussion of the influence of Tom Spanbauer, his ideas about “dangerous writing” and the benefits of exploring uncomfortable personal experiences in sparse, direct prose. And we should probably also mention David Fincher’s excellent film adaptation starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt – and Brad Pitt’s torso. There’s no shortage of things to talk about. We’ll just have to defy the rules.

In order to encourage early infractions, we have five copies to give away to the first five readers from the UK to post “I want a copy please”, along with a nice, constructive comment in the comments section below. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the first to comment, email Laura Kemp with your address (laura.kemp@theguardian.com). Be nice to her, too. And as usual, all suggestions and ideas for future discussions will be gratefully received.