Notes on Infinity: New Book Club Book for 2025
If you are looking for a New Book Club Book for 2025, check out Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor. This post has Jen’s Quick Take on the book, plus book club questions for Notes on Infinity!
New Book Club Book for 2025: Notes on Infinity
This Book Club Guide to Notes on Infinity will have Jen’s Quick Take, plus Book Club Questions and the ending of Notes on Infinity explained!
Jen’s Quick Take on Notes on Infinity
- Notes on Infinity is a coming of age story, a cautionary tale about ambition and success in the 2020s, and a love story (but is it a romance? let’s discuss!)
- Some readers are pushing back on the comparisons to Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Yes, they are DIFFERENT books, but the vibes are there. The Cambridge setting. The opposites attract student relationship. The love-story-but-is-it-a-romance? The obsession with success in a competitive field (science and gaming)
- I would also compare Notes on Infinity STRONGLY to a real-life news story (but that’s a spoiler so I will not do that here.)
- I was also getting 1970s Love Story vibes. I watched the movie back in the 80s or 90s, but the rich boy/poor girl romance vibes are there!
Book Club Questions for Notes on Infinity
Here are a few Book Club Questions.
If you want my complete two-page color list of thought provoking Book Club Questions for Notes on Infinity, you can download that below!
- Why do you think Zoe is so obsessed with making her mark at Harvard? What forces drive her to push aside her social life and focus on gaining a lab job that seems unachievable? Do you relate to her at all? Why or why not? How does her family background both help her and make her feel inadequate?
- What do you think Zoe’s initial attraction to Jack is based upon? As their relationship develops, what do you think of it? What does each of them gain from it?
- Jack exhibits some concerning behavior that affects his health. What did you originally think was the cause of it, and when you found out some of the reasons behind it, how do you think they drove his decisions?
- Discuss the motivations behind Jack’s secret-keeping. When Zoe and Jack start to find success from their research, what do you think his motivations were for separating their roles and keeping information from her?
Books Like Notes on Infinity
Looking for similar books? Here are a few:
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: two students meet in Cambridge (Sam goes to Harvard, Sadie to MIT) in the 1990s and pursue success in video games.
Love Story by Erich Segal: rich boy poor girl romance at Harvard in the 1970s. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou: though Taylor doesn’t acknowledge that she was inspired by the story of Stanford student Elizabeth Holmes, who dropped out of college to run a start-up that was proven to be based on fraudulent data, had a romantic relationship with her CFO, and was tried for fraud, she MUST have been, right?
The Epic of Gilgamesh: I had to read this in high school, which was long enough ago that I can’t remember it well, but it’s quoted so much in the book that maybe a re-read is in order.
Normal People by Sally Rooney: maybe you’ve already read it or watched the show, but this story of two people at university who circle around and around each other definitely has parallels to Notes on Infinity.
