I fully agree with the author on the problem, but the suggested solution of doing periodic readings together is a hard sell for busy ppl to commit to - I find s

I fully agree with the author on the problem, but the suggested solution of doing periodic readings together is a hard sell for busy ppl to commit to - I find synchronous reading boring. There are a few ways to increase the chance of a book club: (1) Reduce the reading length per session. (2) Provide a carrot to encourage ppl to do the reading. These two levers led a few friends and I to start something called Short Story Club [1], which is really starting to take off now. It's relatively easy to get folks to read a 30-40 page short story, and we try to provide a free copy so people don't have to make a purchase. IMO short stories are super underrated and overlooked - many of them pack a punch bigger than the average novel. We start each session with small group discussions over Zoom. For the carrot, we get the author of the short story to come on the Zoom and do a Q&A session, letting attendees ask their questions directly via video like in a real event. So far, we've focused on science fiction, and we've gotten Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, and Cory Doctorow to join us. So, even if you're not doing short stories for your own book club, a better way is to chunk up big books and meet periodically. Make it an event: if in person make an effort to cook or provide good snacks, music, whatever it takes to make it easy for people to commit to. And have good discussion points ready. [1] https://www.shortstory.club https://www.shortstory.club - if you're interested, we have Hugh Howey coming next week to discuss WOOL, one of my fav stories