Book Club Redux

chaos

chaos

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I am thinking of bringing the book club back. I will try and run it instead of handing it off to someone else.I'm petitioning for ideas here, let me know if there is something you think we should or shouldn't do. Please keep in mind that we can't make everyone 100% happy but I think we can have a pretty good program.

My idea was to follow the model we had before for the monthly picks. 1 sci-fi, 1 fantasy, 1 general fiction, 1 non-fiction, and some kind of either miscellany or maybe a classic fiction option. Polls go up on 20th, close in 7 days, we start reading/discussion on the first. I put the poll on here to gauge interest. If people are interested please vote, even if you don't really care but might participate please indicate that.

Also please indicate any suggestions you guys may have. My idea was to keep things fairly simple as far as the structure, and of course accept any suggestions for books that people want included.
 
Himeo

Himeo

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If you're starting this up again please abandon the old system. It didn't work for the audience we had.

Most of the complaints of the old system were that people had already read the book of the month. Which is pretty dumb when the selection of books is based on recommendations from the community. It defeats the purpose of, you know, reading the same book at the same time.

The community wants good books they haven't read before. That should be the only criteria. Give people fewer choices. Vote based on what you HAVEN'T read.
 
chaos

chaos

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Everyone has read different stuff, though. I had thought of just having a reader nomination period and voting based on that. I am oo en to whatever systwm as long as it works. I want to start up on the 20th of this month with preliminary voting or whatever, so if anyone has any suggestions for a system to choose books that would be better than what we had been doing, I would love to see that.
 
chaos

chaos

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What we did before was reading starts officially on the 1st of the month with no discussion out of spoilers until the 7th, and people can read at their own pace and then join the discussion as they finish. But like everything else, that is open for debate. That is what I figured we would go with unless someone had a new idea.
 
Zodiac

Zodiac

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I agree, you shouldn't vote for books you have already read. The whole point is for everyone to read them at the same time.
 
chaos

chaos

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The poll is open for a couple more days, if anyone interested hasn't voted please do so. Also if anyone has any suggestions about how to run it please let me know, either publicly here or in a pm or whatever. If I don't hear any feedback or ideas (which I hope I do) I am just going to go with the system we have and see how we can make it work.

If anyone has any suggestions for books, you can go ahead and provide those.
 
agripa

agripa

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chaos_sl said:
The poll is open for a couple more days, if anyone interested hasn't voted please do so. Also if anyone has any suggestions about how to run it please let me know, either publicly here or in a pm or whatever. If I don't hear any feedback or ideas (which I hope I do) I am just going to go with the system we have and see how we can make it work.

If anyone has any suggestions for books, you can go ahead and provide those.
Click to expand...
A few suggestions

The Dog Stars
Petter Heller

The Ways of the Dead: A Novel
Neely Tucker

The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe
Stephen Harding

Thank You for Your Service
David Finkel

Inferno
Dan Brown
 
A

a_skeleton_03

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I think the only month I did a real good job was when I picked a theme for all of the books instead of multiple genres. The future TV shows month.

You should do that instead.
 
chaos

chaos

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Yeah that was a really good idea. If I had ideas for themes I would do that, but I totally do not.
 
Agraza

Agraza

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I liked that month. I read a bunch of them. I'm pretty good at reading them, and way less good at posting about them.
 
A

a_skeleton_03

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chaos_sl said:
Yeah that was a really good idea. If I had ideas for themes I would do that, but I totally do not.
Click to expand...
Themes I was planning on in the future

Unsolved True Crime (things like Black Dahlia and D.B. Cooper)
Movies based on little known books
Biography Month (people we care about like Tesla or John Carmack)
Science book (not sic-fi but a book discussing something important like maybe stem cells without being insanely hard to read)

That isn't a ton to start on but you could find something like that to work with probably.
 
S

Seventh

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I read some great books solely based on the old BOTM recommendations. I'd be psyched to see it come back, so that I can stop stalking Grimm's profile on Goodreads for suggestions.
 
chaos

chaos

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a_skeleton_03_sl said:
Themes I was planning on in the future

Unsolved True Crime (things like Black Dahlia and D.B. Cooper)
Movies based on little known books
Biography Month (people we care about like Tesla or John Carmack)
Science book (not sic-fi but a book discussing something important like maybe stem cells without being insanely hard to read)

That isn't a ton to start on but you could find something like that to work with probably.
Click to expand...
If people like the themes (and they seem to) then we can do that. If anyone has a different idea please speak up.
 
khalid

khalid

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Sounds good. Just be ready for a bad month where people just don't like the winner. Also, don't fucking vote for something if you aren't willing to actually buy it and read it.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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The problem with the voting is that this board is full of fantasy nerds so that genre always wins with an occasional sci-fi book thrown in. It seems like people would want to expand their horizons a bit if they're going to read a book that wasn't chosen by them, but maybe that would just result in nobody participating. To me the fun of a book club is getting turned on to something that you wouldn't have read on your own. I guess all I'm saying is that reading nothing but fantasy and sci-fi is lame. Maybe the monthly themes would help with that.

My opinion is not important though because even though I would like to, I know I will never make time to get the books read in a reasonable time to participate unless it's in the winter.
 
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