Warning about those fancy book club subscription boxes

I signed up for a monthly box that picks your group's next read. Cost me $45 a month. The first book was fine, but the next two were total duds our whole club hated. We felt stuck reading them because we paid. Ended up canceling after three months, so that's $135 gone. Anyone know a better way to pick books without wasting cash?

3 comments

3 Comments

jackson.wesley1mo ago

My buddy got roped into one of those last year. His third book was some weird historical fiction about a clockmaker in Prague, and his whole group just gave up after fifty pages. They switched to picking paperbacks from a used bookstore for five bucks each.

grant.kevin1mo ago

That's why our book club has a veto rule. If three people say no to a pick, it's out. We also stick to books under 300 pages for meetings. Forces everyone to pick stuff people will actually read, not just try to sound smart.

the_blake25d ago

Honestly that veto rule is genius, stops people from trying to flex with some unreadable doorstop. My old group let someone pick "Infinite Jest" once and it was a total disaster, like three of us just pretended to read it and talked about the footnotes for an hour. Feel for @jackson.wesley's buddy with the Prague clockmaker, that sounds like a special kind of pain. These days I'd take a cheap used paperback any time, at least then you're only out five bucks and an afternoon.