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JohnT
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Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:24
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jon miller,
To answer your question, I'm going to cross-post something I wrote for another message board and I'll try to edit out non-pertinent information...
quote:
Here in Knoxville, I (co)-moderate a couple of discussion groups - a film discussion group and a science fiction novel discussion group, and have about 4 years experience doing this, all told. So, I do have a couple of questions, points that I think must be considered:
1. Given the interests of time and in trying to get as large a group as possible, should we limit the number of pages per novel to, say, 500-600?
2. I would like that to nominate a book and to second it, you must have actually read the entire book. Trust me - doing books nobody has read is an easy way to get burned.
3. Cost and Availability. No books that have not made it to paperback. No books that are so obscure that they will require shipping and Google. Preferably books that can easily be found in libraries and used bookstores - actually, I would prefer no new releases (either paperback or hardback) at all, giving the books time to percolate down to the used book stores. Otoh, the book must still be available in a current edition - for example, if this was a book club that focused on social issues,Unsafe at Any Speed, while an influential book, could not be a selection because it is out of print, but The Jungle would be OK as it is in print.
4. Moderators. If you like a book so much that you want to lead the discussion, please remember that you will lead the discussion, not just participate. A few hours of research on the net, reading other peoples thoughts on the book, will definitely increase the number of topics you can use to draw people into the subject.
Anyway, I think if we keep the above things in mind when we nominate books we'll have a nice group here with plenty of participants. The Handmaids Tale is, I consider, one of the more perfect books you can use for a book club - it's easily available in used and new editions, short but thematically deep (easy for mods!), popular (good turnout book), and can fit in a broad list of categories (sf, womens lit, popular fiction, etc). |
So, in my opinion we shouldn't nominate books we haven't read. But, that's just my opinion: as a new discussion group we can form it any way we wish. I wouldn't be adverse to selecting a new author (defined as one who started publishing less than 5 years ago) every 3 months, leaving the other two months for the Canon. Do you think that will work, and do you think you could research and nominate the books for those months?
Last edited by JohnT on 14-01-2003 at 18:15
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14-01-2003 06:43
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