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Book club picked a 700 page novel and only 4 of us finished it, is this normal?
We meet on Wednesdays at a library in Portland. Last pick was 712 pages. Our host asked for a show of hands at the start and 4 out of 11 had made it to the end. The rest gave up around page 200. Now half the group wants shorter books and the other half says finishing is not the point. I am stuck in the middle and I do not know how to vote. How do you all handle a book that most of the club did not finish? Do you still talk about it or just pick something new?
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the_james7d ago
So when you say the group talked about it, did the four who finished just recap the ending for everyone else, or did the people who quit at page 200 still have stuff to say about the part they read? I'm asking because those are two very different meetings. If the quitters bailed at the point where the plot actually starts moving (page 200 in a 712 page book is basically the intro) then they didn't really give it a shot and that's on them. But if the book was a slog from page one and everyone felt it, then the shorter books crowd has a real point. What did the four finishers actually say about it? Did they love it or did they just grind through out of guilt?
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king.andrew7d ago
The "did they just grind through out of guilt" part is the real question. I saw a post on r/books a while back where someone said their club started rating books on two scales, one for how good it was and one for how glad they were when it was over, and Infinite Jest scored high on the second one. Sounds like your four finishers might be in that boat. @the_james the tell is whether they talked about scenes they loved or just talked about finishing. Like if someone says "the part with the wheelchair assassins was amazing" that's real, but if all they say is "man it felt good to close that book" then the quitters had a point too.
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