11 O'Clock Book Group Selection #1

[Lawrence]

   :notworthy:This is one of those books that has been sitting in my unread pile for awhile now. So Im glad to have a great reason to read it. As soon as we have a structure ill get to crackalackin

[Papercut]

So the 2nd book was decided, too? For some reason I thought this was just voting for the first book. No worries.

[deadcowaroma]

We'll read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick after that and then we'll determine which of the 3 third-place books we read after that. I'm excited!

Nice. That's on my pile of books to read anyways, so good timing! Since I've already read Catcher in the Rye a while ago and got other stuff to read, I'll probably pass on that, but I'll be here for the next round. 

[Matt H.O.W.L.]

So the 2nd book was decided, too? For some reason I thought this was just voting for the first book. No worries.

I just assumed. We'll worry about the 2nd book after we get the first one rolling. Sorry.

[Matt H.O.W.L.]

HEY, GUYS!
Thank you for all the interest in starting a book group. I've spent a lot of the day thinking about what the hell I'm going to post for The Catcher in Rye. This is the first chance I've had to get online today and found a nice PM from Chad that politely cautioned me about approaching this in an organized manner, or it could collapse and be a missed opportunity. It's like the man's picking up my thought waves! He suggested I seek advice from Dan, which I have. Just wanted to let you know that it might be a few more days of asking you questions in the book-club threads to get a sense of what serves the whole best. Please, don't hesitate to give me advice, feedback, etc. It can only help. While I proposed the group, I don't (and don't want to) own it. I want it to be something we all own. I just want to facilitate and participate. The only problem with that is that there will 20+ people's needs/desires to consider. What's worse is I'm a Libra, so I'm all about making things fair for all and sometimes progress suffers for it.
So, in summary, I/We're still thinking about:
1. Reading schedules (whole book/chunks)
2. How we will talk about the book (What's a Skype  , podcasts, boards, chats)
3. How "deeply" we'll be discussing the book (prompting questions, links to essays/critiques, loose chatter, etc.)
4. Did I miss anything?

So, talk to me. And don't interpret any inactivity on our first selection as disinterest. It's quite the opposite, I assure you (more like hand-wringing and fumbling).

[bryanb]

Cool. I've read it but it was so very long ago and on the plus side I don't have to buy it.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to read more non-funny papers books this year. I was gonna do a book a month. I burned through two Parker novels but I stalled (yet again) reading FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE. Maybe this will get me back on track.

[Dave A]

1. Reading schedules -- We're in good fortune, because it's the 1st of the new month today! I think a month should be enough time for each book. (Of course, this will include the time necessary to get our hands on a copy of the book if we don't already have it, so maybe we should keep a page limit in mind for future selections. I don't think anyone around here should have a problem finishing Catcher by April 1, though.) It'll probably be a good idea to choose a particular day of the week for the discussion if it's to be a live one (like the first Monday of every month or something). Or, if it's just on the board, then it can be post as you go and the first of each month could be when the next thread is opened.

2. How we will talk about the book -- This one I'm less sure about... part of me likes the relaxed feel of just posting as we go, but it's really hard to sustain a discussion that way... I fear that we'd all just be writing essays and throwing them out for everyone else to read. Skype could be cool, or get tricky... I don't know enough about how it works, but 20 people talking over each other on a phone line sounds rather hellish to me. Maybe someone could organize a chat room? Someplace we could all write at each other in real time?

3. How "deeply" we'll be discussing the book --I like the idea of loose chatter... I think we're all smart enough not to have conversations like "I liked it." "I liked it, too." "Ok, cool, see you next time."  Of course, it wouldn't be a bad idea to request that every participant write down a couple discussion points of interest in case things ended up getting dry.

[Farrell]

Reading schedules:  A month sounds good to me, at least at the start.  "Catcher" is not a very long book, if memory serves.  If we do agree to read a longer book in the future, perhaps we can adjust the time factor accordingly. 

How we will talk about the book: This one's tough.  We all have different schedules, and I'd hate to exclude someone from active participation simply because they work a particular day, but I do think a chatroom or Skype approach might facilitate more actual conversation.  As Dave A. noted, otherwise we might be reading each other's essays.  That's not necessarily unworkable, though....  I'm not sure.  I hate to make this a vote fest, but maybe the participants for a given month could also vote on their preferred day/time (that's if we were going with a real time model)

How deep?: I'll just basically echo Dave A. here.  I also have faith in the collective IQ of this group, not to mention how opinionated we are 

No matter what decisions we make now, for the first run at this, there are bound to be adjustments as we go.  And I think that's fine.  Matt, I respect that you don't want to be considered the owner of this group, but I do think it would be beneficial for someone to have final say on contested issues.  Everyday contributes their opinions, feedback, ideas, etc and they're the one who says, "okay, let's try this".  Just to keep from spinning our wheels.  If you're willing, I think you'd be the man for that job.

[malpractice]

alright just ordered both catcher and androids from amazon. should be here soon.

Reading schedules: 1-2 months sounds about right.

How we will talk about the book: the skype chatroom sounds good. maybe we could do about 6-10 people to actually be in the roundtable discussion while everyone else can submit emails the roundtable can read on the show or small recorded segments that can be played on the show (kind of like the voicemails on 11'o clock). the roundtable can always change every month depending on what the book is. considering that there are only about 12 or so of us posting in the thread right now, it might not be to hard to get everyone in on the roundtable discussion every month but the number could get bigger in the future.

How deep? depends on where the discussion leads i guess. whoever the roundtable is could probably get together in skype or an AIM chat or something before and just discuss what points they want to hit for the show discussion, and maybe give a little bit of a structure to the discussion beforehand so it dosen't just trail off into rambling or something on the show.

[Lawrence]

to me the schedule being a month sounds perfect. As to how we discuss it the chatroom sounds great but personal schedules do seem to get in the way. In having our own thread i think if we all discuss it there as well as a scheduled chatroom meeting nobody would be completly left out. That being said im up for whatever and Matt has taken this thing this far if your willing to keep it up it would probably be for the best.

[Wood]

KARMA!

Can't believe we're starting this off with the book that inspired my baby boy's name!

[Dave A]

How we will talk about the book: the skype chatroom sounds good. maybe we could do about 6-10 people to actually be in the roundtable discussion while everyone else can submit emails the roundtable can read on the show or small recorded segments that can be played on the show (kind of like the voicemails on 11'o clock). the roundtable can always change every month depending on what the book is. considering that there are only about 12 or so of us posting in the thread right now, it might not be to hard to get everyone in on the roundtable discussion every month but the number could get bigger in the future.

Wait, we're recording this? It's a show now? I thought it was just a friendly chat?

I think I missed a meeting.... 

[Farrell]

Wait, we're recording this? It's a show now? I thought it was just a friendly chat?

I think I missed a meeting.... 

I don't think so.  I don't anything has been determined for sure, but it's not a done deal that it's a show.  I would hope that it's not, anyway, at least not right out of the gate....

[Robert]

I must say that the idea of a book-a-month discussion is very exciting.

Keeping the schedule to one book per month I think is loose enough yet is also structured so as not to allow the participants to lose interest.

I think an on-line chat would help to facilitate conversation and discussion of the book but keeping a thread open to allow participants to submit "essays" should also be available because of conflicting schedules.

Perhaps to aid in the facilitation or participation by forumites, a loose schedule of 2,3, or more chapters (depending on the book) could be a rough estimate for any give week.  Of course this may be different for each person participating but if we want to keep on an ACTIVE schedule and encourage participation we may need some kind of guideline. 

Just some quick thoughts.

[malpractice]

Wait, we're recording this? It's a show now? I thought it was just a friendly chat?

I think I missed a meeting.... 

I guess it's all up in the air right now, but in the previous thread the idea of recording a podcast was thrown around by a few people including myself.

[David]

Maybe someone could organize a chat room? Someplace we could all write at each other in real time?

Not sure if this'll work, but there is a chat room on the forum.  It can be found here.

[clever_username]

Not sure if this'll work, but there is a chat room on the forum.  It can be found here.

Thanks David. This might work well. While I wouldn't mind Skyping it, I don't know if I could find time. Heck, most of my forum posting is at work or at 1 in the morning.

As far as discussion goes, there is always a big risk of spoilers. So do we want to divide the talk into sections (i.e. first quarter of the book for the first week, etc.)? One month is good for smaller books, but we'll need at least two for longer books (a year if we do Cryptonomicon).

[Matt H.O.W.L.]

Hey, gang,
thanks for all of your input and patience while we worked this out. We're going to be legit! Make sure and give David A. Price some karma for giving us our own board here! We're right there on Munden's Bar between The End Cap and the Traffic Exchange boards! Woohoo! Chad has been kind enough to offer to co-moderate this new board with me, so give him some karma, too! We'll be posting a schedule for our pilot book, The Catcher in the Rye, and some general guidelines for the group.
RE: podcasting the discussions. That doesn't seem like a possibility for now, so we may have Skype discussions, but they wouldn't be offered to the public.
I am thinking a couple of scheduled chat-room talks might be a nice option. I really want this group to work on whatever level the user wants it to for him/her. Some just want to read good books, some want to read good books and others' thoughts about them, some want to post messages about good books, some want to talk live about them. If we do this right, everybody can have rewarding experiences with their fellow members by investing as much or as little as they want of their time and energy. It's been a long weekend so: Think of the book as the Comics Event. Reading the book & posting in the related threads would be buying the core title. All the other stuff is the tie-ins. I want everyone to enjoy the event, even if they don't want to buy everything with a The Catcher in the Rye "banner" on it. I hope that makes sense. It's a work in progress, folks! 

[Mike Smith]

 Karma for Matt and Chad for bringing this together.  I don't get to spend much time online anymore since the wife went back to school but I will be scheduling some more online time for this.  I think dividing the book into sections for discussion is the way to go.  It will avoid spoilers for the people who haven't read that far and will help keep the discussions more focused.  I have never used Skype before but if that is the way we decided to roll I am cool with that.