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Five years in my book club and we finally cracked the code on choosing books
For the first four years our book club in Austin picked books by whichever member shouted loudest. Always ended up with 600 page novels nobody finished. Last year we started using a ranked voting app, three choices per person. Now we actually read the whole book before meetings. Has anyone else tried changing how your group picks books?
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lisab3212d ago
God yeah, we had the same problem in my group. Switching to a voting system was the best thing we ever did, actually made people show up.
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emma_lee2212d ago
Got caught in that same trap with my book club last year, @lisab32. The voting thing works but I'd say it only gets you part of the way there because you still have people who vote and then just don't show up anyway. What really fixed it for us was adding a small penalty for no-shows without warning (like a dollar or two, nothing crazy) and it made a massive difference. Nobody wants to be the person who costs everyone else their snack money, you know?
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milesbarnes12d agoTop Commenter
4 out of 5 times in my experience, the same people who don't vote are the ones who don't show up, and that's just part of a larger pattern where we all avoid small commitments until there's a real cost attached. Voting gets you good picks but it doesn't fix the basic human tendency to flake the moment something slightly better comes along. Money on the table changes the math completely because it turns a vague social promise into something that actually stings.
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