PSA: The page count trick that saved my book club from 3 boring meetings in a row

Last month I realized our book club in Austin kept picking these 500 page literary novels that nobody finished. Three meetings in a row we had maybe 2 people who actually read the book. So I started checking page counts before voting and we set a hard limit of 350 pages max. It sounds dumb but now everyone actually reads the book and our discussions are way better. Has anyone else tried keeping books shorter to keep your group engaged?

2 comments

2 Comments

haydenp951mo ago

350 pages seems like an arbitrary cutoff that filters out some of the most rewarding reads just because they're dense, and our group actually had way better conversations when we struggled through a challenging 500-page book than when we breezed through something light.

harper_murphy1mo ago

Get where you're coming from completely, 350 pages feels like it was picked out of a hat. In my experience, some of the best discussions happen when everyone has to wrestle with a book's ideas, not just flip through pages fast. Your mileage may vary, but a heavy read that makes you stop and think beats a light one that everyone forgets by the next meeting.