Two years ago my book club read 'Moby Dick' and half the group ghosted before chapter 30

We went from 12 people to 5 after the whale anatomy chapters started. The remaining 5 of us spent the whole meeting complaining about the other 7, which actually made the book more fun. Has anyone else's club fallen apart over a classic?

3 comments

3 Comments

tara64220d ago

And half the group ghosted before chapter 30" - that's honestly impressive they made it that far. We tried reading Les Miserables in my book club and 8 out of 10 people quit by page 100. The two of us left just sat there reading the wikipedia summary out loud and laughing about how dumb the whole thing was. Classics are brutal for group reads, man. They're either too long or too boring or both.

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joel_clark3720d ago

18 pages is where my last D&D group fell apart, same energy as your Les Mis thing @tara642. It's like people forget real life is just as long and boring as a classic book. You spend 40 hours a week at a job you hate, sit through a 2 hour meeting that could've been an email, and then act surprised when a 1,200 page novel doesn't hold everyone's attention. The real joke is we all keep trying to force group hobbies when half the group can't even finish a Netflix series together.

bennett.evan20d ago

Oh come on, Les Miserables is not dumb, it's just that people don't have any attention span anymore lol. Victor Hugo literally invented the concept of a 50 page tangent about a bishop and some candlesticks, that's art. But seriously, the whole "too long and boring" thing just means you're reading it wrong. You gotta treat it like a podcast you zone in and out of, not a page turner. And the wikipedia summary thing is funny but you also missed like 90% of the actual story. Group reads work if everyone actually commits, but half the problem is people thinking they can breeze through a 1,200 page book in a week like it's a TikTok video.