Picked a nonfiction book for my club that backfired completely

I chose "The Big Short" for our monthly book club thinking it would spark some good debates about finance and ethics. Everyone hated it. Three members stopped reading after 50 pages and two others said it was way too confusing with all the mortgage jargon. The one guy who liked it tried to explain CDOs and nobody cared. Turns out my book club prefers fiction with messy relationships or unreliable narrators. They want to argue about whether the protagonist made the right choice, not about what a collateralized debt obligation is. Has anyone else picked a book that went over like a lead balloon and how did you recover for the next month?

2 comments

2 Comments

kai_park1mo ago

A book club is supposed to be a social thing, not a classroom lecture. Sounds like you forgot that part. Everyone just wants to drink wine and argue about who should have ended up together, not take notes on mortgage-backed securities. The fact that a whole group bailed on the book says more about the pick than it does about them. Just pick something with a cheating spouse or a murder next month and nobody will even remember this happened.

the_margaret1mo ago

Oh BOY does this hit close to home. I swear half of "social" activities these days get turned into homework assignments and it drives me crazy. It's like people forget that not EVERYTHING needs to be a deep dive or a learning experience - sometimes you just want to chat and have fun with friends after a long week.