Last fall my group picked "The Goldfinch" and it was a total disaster too. Only one person actually liked it, the rest of us thought it was way too long and boring. We basically spent the whole meeting apologizing to each other for picking it. Did your group ever recover from that or did you lose a few members?

Did it change your mind on buying cheap test gear too?

Always strap cable to the joist" - yeah I learned that one the hard way too. Got called back to a house six months after I ran some low voltage lines loose in a crawl space. Rodents chewed through two of them. Now I zip tie everything neat and tight, every four feet just like the old guys said. Saves a ton of headaches later.

Ask @andrew_baker9 if that stubbornness ever backfired on him later, like when you realized you coulda finished the job in half the time if you just asked for a hand. Tbh, I've been there too and wondered if the pride was worth the sweat.

@margaretc42 nailed it. Skipping chapters is just polite avoidance.