Hot take: Our book club hit 37 members and the discussions got worse

We started with 8 people who all actually read the books, but after hitting that number last month, half the group just talks about the movie adaptation instead. It feels like we're debating casting choices more than themes now. Has anyone else seen their club's quality drop after a certain size?

4 comments

4 Comments

grantthomas1mo ago

My buddy Dave ran into the same problem with his sci-fi book club last year. They hit 42 people and suddenly half the meetup was just arguments about which actor would be better in a hypothetical movie. Dave tried everything short of sitting people in different rooms. Eventually he split the group into two separate 20-person clubs based on whether people wanted to watch movies or stick to books. The book-only group is down to 15 now but they actually finish the reading. Dave says he'd rather have 15 people who care than 40 people who just want to talk about trailers.

grayb643mo ago

Sounds like your book club turned into a movie club by accident. Maybe next month's pick should be a book with no adaptation, like the phone book.

camerona793mo ago

Been there. We had to ban movies for three months to reset the group.

wesley_grant331mo ago

That's smart @camerona79, seems like everything good these days gets watered down into something else.