Warning: Our club spent 40 minutes on chapter 3 and never got past page 12 because of one tiny habit
I run a small book club out of my garage in Sacramento and for almost a year we had this same problem. Someone would bring up a quote, someone else would say it reminded them of their job, and boom, 15 minutes gone. Two weeks ago I tried something different. I printed a single sheet with just three questions and put a hard rule on the table: no personal stories until we finish all three. We got through the whole book in one sitting with time to spare. The weird part is the talk got better, not worse, because people stopped fighting to get their story in and started listening. I think the real issue is that most clubs treat the meeting like a hangout that happens to have a book nearby. If you want to test this, try it once and see if your group notices. What does your club do to keep from drifting off the book?