Looking back at the AI Book Club one year in

by Tom Johnson on Apr 28, 2026
categories: ai-book-club

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the AI Book Club. We’ve now read 12 books in the club — see the list of books. For each session you can view recordings, notes, transcripts, discussion questions, etc.

By some measures, the book club might not be considered much of a success. For each session, I record the discussion using Google Meet. Then I publish the recording on YouTube, along with a transcript and other notes. For the 12 videos, combined there are only about 2,000+ views. And the number of attendees has fluctuated but averages probably 4-5 per session. (In comparison, a popular podcast might get this many views from the single episode alone.)

For the time it takes to read a book, put together discussion notes, publish the recording and post the notes, it’s a lot of time for little return on engagement. For example, for a 300 page book, you’re looking at about 10 reading hours or listening hours (at least). Then another 1-2 hours coming up with discussion questions, notes, etc. (Sometimes I listen to author interviews or other book reviewers discussing the book.) Then add in another hour doing some post-processing on the recording in Camtasia (adding an intro, title slide, cutting out the introductory smalltalk) and then creating the post with the notes (transcript, key takeaways, description, audio metadata). Plus the session itself. So each book consumes at least 15 hours of time each month.

Engagement-wise, for an average of 150 views per video, this would be considered poor ROI for an online activity. I joked a few months ago that if this were an AI Tools workshop, there would likely be much more attendance and interest.

Those 15 hours of time each month come from a limited amount of my available hobby time. How much hobby time do I have per month? Let’s assume that I work from 9-5, with a 7am to 7pm door-to-door time (includes commute, shower, dropping off or picking up kids, etc.) during the week. Then maybe a good 10 hours of hobby time on the weekends. After 9pm my brain is mush, so during the weekdays I only have about 2 hours per day, or 10 hours of available time per week. 10 hours during the week plus 10 hours on the weekend == 80 hours per month. From this 80 hours, subtract more time for personal escape time (e.g., watching NBA or Netflix (maybe 20 hrs?), time for writing blog posts (maybe 10 hrs?), time for playing basketball (maybe 20 hrs?), time for chauffeuring to soccer (maybe 5 hrs?) and so on. This means that of my 25 available hours per month, more than half is devoted to reading this book and doing the book club.

It’s also a bit stressful to commit to a regular schedule. I was or am (depends on the day) a member of the Seattle Intellectual Book Club. Thank goodness I’m not the organizer. There’s a tremendous convenience in being able to duck out whenever I want. I don’t have to be the one picking the next book, reserving the venue, arriving at the venue and welcoming people, managing communications and website costs, etc. If I peek in and see that they’re reading a book I don’t like, or if my life gets too busy, I can just disappear and surface when I like.

You don’t have this convenience when you’re running a book club. The organizer is on the hook for doing all of this, every time. Even if it doesn’t involve a lot of time, the fact that the organizer must commit to that regular schedule is stressful. What if you want to go on a trip? What if your wife wants to see a show? What if you have another family event conflict? What if you just don’t feel like reading a book that month? What if you’re super busy at work? Well, as an organizer, you are still obligated to continue moving everything forward, like clockwork. That can be really stressful.

However, the expectations are also a forcing function that ensures that you keep reading and staying engaged. That forcing function is also a big reason I keep doing my AI Book Club — because I know that if I stop, I might also stop reading as much, and that would be bad. So the stress has its benefits.

Is it really worth doing all of this? Wouldn’t this time be better spent managing a tools workshop instead? Surely a book club is a labor of love, the equivalent of volunteering in an intellectual garden somewhere. The other day I was feeling a bit of boredom and duty more than excitement about the book club. I had to re-evaluate whether I should keep pushing forward with the club.

The positives of organizing a book club are pretty compelling, though. Here are the main ones:

Positive number one: You will be reading that book, whether you like it or not. Without this book club, I highly doubt I would have read 12 books on AI last year. I might have listened to 3-4 on Audible and fizzled out a few hours in. So the book club is acting as a strong forcing function to keep me reading.

Positive number two: You get to have good conversations with other people who have read the book. Have you ever read a book and wanted to discuss it with someone, but could only find only some reddit threads written years ago? There’s nothing more engaging than having a good discussion with other people who are smart, interesting, and fun to talk to and who have just read the same book as you. You’ve all walked that path of meandering through the author’s mind for a good number of hours, and now you take that shared experience and have a conversation like no other.

Positive number three: Reading. I love reading. There were a few books last year where I listened to the Audible version instead of reading the print version (the audio version actually takes longer but isn’t hard to do with an hour-long commute like I have). However, I enjoy reading print books, with a pen handy. I like writing notes in the margins, marking passages I like, etc.

I think reading will be a major hobby that I do when I retire as well, and I hope to also go to book clubs in my old age (not sure what else I’ll do). But long before I retire, I know reading itself is an activity that goes hand-in-hand with writing. It’s difficult to write if you don’t read, and also strange to read but not write. So reading has become a catalyst for my own writing, even if I’m writing something unrelated to the book I’m reading. Just reading gets my brain’s wheels turning and firing.

Positive number four: We’re surrounded by instant culture, immediate responses from AI tools and other sources. Reading slows down and focuses the brain. Reading is for sure a “slow movement” type of engagement, and is something I recently wrote about in my Frenetic thinking post. I appreciate the positive effects in slowing my brain down in a more focused, almost meditative way.

Positive number five: Expanded perspective. Having read all these books on AI, for each new book we readh, it gets easier to consume. I see and understand common themes, arguments, histories, ideas, concerns, etc in the domain. This familiarity of course has the countereffect of making the books that repeat these themes seem less interesting, but it’s also fun to build up domain awareness of something like AI, to understand the landscape on a deeper and more thorough level. For example, both Max Tegmark in Life 3.0 and Yudkowsky/Soares in If anyone builds it… have extended imagined scenarios of AI takeover that are interesting to compare. It’s kind of interesting how a book club focused on a specific angle like AI can build up that domain expertise over the course of a year.

Going forward

As I move forward with another year of book clubbing, I’ve got a few resolutions:

• Read books that I want to read. The book club becomes worth it if I’m reading books that I truly want to read. Not books that I think I should read, or that seem relevant, but books that I, Tom, am itching to read.
• Always read print books, not Audible. I benefit so much more from reading the physical book instead of listening to it. I’m not convinced that I retain more, though, so I’m still a bit mixed on what’s ultimately better. I just know that my brain feels better when I’ve spent a chunk of time reading. There’s something about the eyes moving back and forth along each page that acts as an antidote to all the short-form media surrounding me.
• Alternate between AI-focused books and more broad technology-focused books. There are so many poor books on AI, it’s easy to get sick of the topic or to find yourself repeating themes (another “race to AGI” book? Okay, maybe skip that one.) I’m starting to alternate months so that one month the book is squarely AI-focused, and the next month it’s more broadly technology-focused.

One detail that I’m not sure about is the platform. My experiment of doing this all on my blog via AI Book Club might have limited visibility options. If I were to expand this group on meetup.com, it might build up the audience pool more. But I also think a conversation with 4-5 people is the perfect number. It’s like a dinner conversation. If you have more than 4-5 people at the table, then you don’t end up with a really engaging conversation. It ends up being more fragmented and scattered, with lots of different people getting in 1-2 comments in a more chaotic, performative way. (Trust me — I have four kids. When all six of us are at the table, it’s chaos. Four is perfect.) Some of the best book club discussions I’ve been in just involve a few people — if you’re chatting with the right people, everyone participates more and that increased participation makes it feel more meaningful and enriching.

If you’re interested in reading more and participating in the club, check out AI Book Club. Sign up and start reading!