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My book club picked a 900 page monster and only 2 of us finished it
We voted on a big history book back in March because one member swore it read fast. It was 900 pages and our group of 8 had four weeks to read it. At the meeting, only 2 people finished, and 3 admitted they stopped around page 150. What surprised me was the discussion was still great. The people who quit had strong opinions about why it lost them, and that turned out to be more interesting than the ending. Now I think a book people abandon can spark a better talk than one everyone loves. How does your club handle it when most people don't finish?
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sandraf8423d ago
What your group stumbled into has a name in some circles: the DNF meeting, and the trick is to plan for it instead of treating it like a failure. Our club started picking books we know half the group will bail on, and we ask the quitters to bring the exact page they gave up and the reason. You find out real stuff that way, like where a writer's promise starts to feel like a bait and switch or how a slow middle kills interest faster than a bad ending. The people who finish always want to defend the whole thing, and the people who quit want to explain the moment it lost them, so you get two totally different reads of the same book. One thing we added: nobody is allowed to say "you should have pushed through" because that shuts down the best part of the talk. Treat quitting as data, not as a member being lazy.
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