Our club's vibe totally shifted after we dropped the 'must finish' rule

For about two years, our group in Austin had this strict rule that everyone had to finish the book before the meeting. It felt like homework, and people started dropping out. Then last fall, our organizer Sarah said, 'Let's try something new. Come even if you only read three chapters.' The change was crazy. Suddenly we had way more people showing up, and the talks got way better because we weren't all just trying to remember the ending. We actually argued about characters and writing style from the parts we *did* read. It went from a quiet group of five to a lively room of twelve. Has anyone else tried ditching the finish rule and seen a similar turnaround?

3 comments

3 Comments

price.nora2mo ago

Our group in Portland did the same thing last year. Went from six people to a full table at the coffee shop. The pressure to finish was killing it.

blair_davis5021d ago

Lol yeah, my group tried that approach once and I ended up speed-reading the last 50 pages at 2am just to keep up, totally missed all the plot twists.

stella6272mo ago

Did the group size really cause the pressure, @price.nora? We kept our big table by just setting our own pace.