Our book club's entire schedule fell apart because we picked 'Infinite Jest'

Last month, my group in Cincinnati decided to tackle David Foster Wallace's giant novel. We gave ourselves six weeks, which seemed fine at first. By week three, only two of us had cracked 200 pages. The WhatsApp chat went dead silent. I tried to host a Zoom just to talk about the first section, and three people showed up looking guilty. One member flat out said 'I'm reading a mystery instead' in the chat. We had to scrap the next three months of planned books because this one derailed everything. Now we're doing short story collections for a while to reset. Has any other club tried to read something huge and just had it break your whole system?

3 comments

3 Comments

daniela857d ago

Oh man, we learned to pick one huge book a year, max.

johnson.river7d ago

Yeah I used to try and power through a giant book every month... felt like I was just checking boxes. Now I pick one big one a year, like War and Peace, and actually enjoy it instead of rushing.

rodriguez.mia7d ago

Honestly, that's so real. I got burned out trying to read fast too. Just taking your time with one big book sounds way better.