Question about handling a book club pick that went totally sideways

Honestly, last month my book club in Austin picked this heavy novel about grief. I pushed for it because a friend swore it was amazing. But when we sat down at Emma's place on a Tuesday night, only three people had finished it. Half the group admitted they stopped after page 50 because it was too slow. I felt awful for wasting everyone's time. We ended up just talking about why the book failed instead of the actual story. Has anyone else had a book pick totally bomb and had to figure out how to keep the group from falling apart?

3 comments

3 Comments

morganl711d ago

Last fall my group picked "The Goldfinch" and it was a total disaster too. Only one person actually liked it, the rest of us thought it was way too long and boring. We basically spent the whole meeting apologizing to each other for picking it. Did your group ever recover from that or did you lose a few members?

quinn34122h ago

Nope, never happening again.

colegarcia21h ago

Yeah "way too long and boring" is exactly why I loved it, books need to earn their page count.