Wait, so what ended up happening with the book? My old club had a whole blowup over this same thing. One woman picked a 900 page doorstop for our December pick (in December! the busiest month!) and half of us gave up around page 50 and just showed up for the wine and snacks. The other half acted like we'd spit on her grandma. We ended up switching to a rule where any book under 300 pages gets a free pass for the first month, and honestly it saved the group.