Found a stat that blew my mind about book club reading choices

I was looking at the BookBrowse website last night and saw that 68% of book clubs pick novels that were published in the last 5 years. That means most groups are skipping over classics and older works completely. Has anyone else noticed their club gravitating toward new releases over older books?

2 comments

2 Comments

uma_webb283d ago

yeah it kinda reminds me of how people treat music now too. everyone just listens to whatever drops on spotify this week and never digs into anything from before like 2010. i see it in my neighborhood book swap where people only trade the stuff that's got those little "book club pick" stickers from target. there's so much good stuff sitting on shelves getting ignored just cause it's not trending on tiktok.

the_sam3d ago

Hang on, that 68% figure is from BookBrowse's survey from a couple years back, not last night. I remember looking at their data and it actually showed 68% of clubs read at least one book from the last 5 years in the past year, not that they skip everything else. My own club does a mix - we read "Project Hail Mary" from 2021 last month, but also tackled "To Kill a Mockingbird" in January. If a group really only picks brand new releases they'd miss out on stuff like "The Color Purple" or "Slaughterhouse Five" that still hit hard in discussions.