Did you notice any drop in your gas bill once you figured out your burner settings? I made the same switch about two years ago and my only complaint at first was going through tanks faster than I thought. Once I learned to dial the burners back and stop running them wide open for every heat it got way better. The thing nobody warns you about is how clean the steel stays. Less scale, less grinding, less time wasted. I still keep my old coal forge around for the odd job where I want that slow soak, but it sits cold most weeks now.

So when you say the group talked about it, did the four who finished just recap the ending for everyone else, or did the people who quit at page 200 still have stuff to say about the part they read? I'm asking because those are two very different meetings. If the quitters bailed at the point where the plot actually starts moving (page 200 in a 712 page book is basically the intro) then they didn't really give it a shot and that's on them. But if the book was a slog from page one and everyone felt it, then the shorter books crowd has a real point. What did the four finishers actually say about it? Did they love it or did they just grind through out of guilt?