Alison's comments
(member since Sep 09, 2007)
Alison's comments from the The Rory Gilmore Book Club group.
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Hi guys. I wanted to say that I appreciate all of the input as well.
I just wanted to clarify that the main reason the discussions have been dropped is because very, very few people were participating. Just browsing back to last month's selection, I see that there were 25 posts in one month from a group of almost 2500 members. And for the entire month of August for Vanity Fair's third part...I see 3 posts.
Do you guys really feel like choosing more books in a month is going to foster more participation? Because that's a good bit of planning/vote calculating on the part of the moderators, for there to be so little discussion. I know early on as a moderator, I felt a bit obliged to read selections that I wasn't particularly interested in, and several that I had already read. As time wore on and the discussions grew thin, I came to feel that I should have just been reading something else of my own choosing (and actually kind of was, and actually kind of felt bad about it).
I would also like to add that from experience, the simpler we keep the process, the more likely we are to have good participation (Hence the adherence to the *one official* list and the narrowing of the monthly selections from two to one. These were all done to omit mass confusion/over-discussion of the "process" and add focus to the actual book discussion which is what GR is really geared toward)
If the vast majority of members wanted to keep the voting/discussion as it has been, we as moderators can discuss that. I just felt a little frustration/confusion as the one who was doing the vote calculating...I would see several members voting for a book, and then very few of those voters actually participating in the discussion.
Sorry to kind of go out on a limb here. Dini, Michele...feel free to add thoughts/comments.
Happy Monday, guys!
Well...I'm almost half way done with Shadow on the Wind. My opinion thus far is that while it's not perfect...it's interesting enough. If I find out that Zafon is leading me down some rabbit hole (a la "Lost")...I'm going to do some book-burning myself!
Seriously...I think it's pretty good. I'm reminded for some odd reason of GGM's Love in the Time of Cholera. Also a little of The Da Vinci Code. Which is a strange combination.
It seems that the last few books I've read lately have all centered around books and reading...or book stores. In The Thirteenth Tale, the main character grows up around a book store and is a big reader. In The Gurnsey Literary and Potato Pie Society...reading plays a key role in bringing people together. Same for The Book Thief, and now...The Shadow of the Wind is actually about a book within a book! I guess you could call it a trend.
I am starting to feel like the plot is a bit contrived and strung out...but if it all comes together nicely, it won't have been for naught!
Voting is closed.
1. Time and Again
2. Beloved
3. The Awakening
Vote here for 3 in order of preference. Voting ends Saturday, October 31 at midnight.
1. Time and Again by Jack Finney
2. Beloved
3. The Awakening
4. Ethan Frome
5. Brave New World
6. Cousin Bette
7. Heart of Darkness
8. Swann's Way
9. Sybil
10. One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
11. The Sun Also Rises
12. A Passage to India
Voting is closed.
I think she did. So many of Jackson's female characters were right on the brink of becoming unhinged...and were always imagining different lives for themselves. I think she was probably mentally ill...
I think my favorite was "Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors" because, while being a short little tale, it says so much. It's amazing where paranoia and panic can set in, once a little seed is planted. Shirley Jackson could say so much about people in such a few, short pages.
As far as leaving you with a sense of completion, I think it was Jackson's style to end before the climax. She left the reader with very open endings, and we were meant to deduct our own meaning. I have to admit after reading a few of them, I was like...what the heck???? Actually, I guess in particular the second one, about the Demon Lover.
Did anyone notice the same man's name coming up in different stories. Sometimes he used a nickname...hold on...I have to look it up.
It was James Harris...also called Jamie, and other nicknames, too, that I can't recall right now. I thought it was genius the way she weaved him throughout the stories..like he was this evil force, or the devil himself.
O.K., I didn't see anything wintery. I'm going with...
1. Time and Again
2. Beloved
Believe it or not, it's time to start nominations for December's selection. In past years, we have tried to nominate a winter or winter holiday selection. This narrowed us down to very few options. So let's stick with that theme IF POSSIBLE. If not, feel free to nominate what you'd like, and we'll let the voters decide. :)
Please nominate TWO CLASSIC selections from the OFFICIAL NOMINATIONS LIST (Under NOMINATIONS & VOTING, see the thread "Nomination Lists"). Nominations will end a week from now on Thursday, October 21, at midnight.
Shirley Jackson had this amazing, albeit negative, perspective of people. Throughout all of these stories, I think she shows an underlying lack of trust and disregard for other people. In The Lottery, she's basically saying, look what can happen when people stop questioning what's happening, and just start to go with the flow. People end up killing each other, senselessly. And oh...........how this happens all over the world. It's the "group think", I think, that she abhorred.
So many of these stories have underlying themes of paranoia, and mental instability. Which carries over into her novels as well...Hill House...We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I read that alot of her stories stem from her experiences of trying to "fit in" in small-town Vermont. Which begs the question...are people really the way she saw them, or was the paranoid, mentally unstable one actually SJ herself?
Let's begin our discussion of The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson. I read this a week ago in one sitting! I was quite enthralled. I'm officially a big SJ fan. Anyone want to get us started?
Voting is closed. Results to come...
1. The Shadow of the Wind
2. Reading Lolita in Tehran
3. Bel Canto
Vote here for 3 in order of preference. Voting ends Wednesday, September 30, at midnight.
1. The Shadow of the Wind
2. Reading Lolita in Tehran
3. Small Island by Andrea Levy
4. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
5. The Namesake
6. Stiff
7. The Red Tent
8. The Lovely Bones
9. Quattrocento
10. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
11. The Kite Runner
12. Nervous System or Losing My Mind in Literature
13. Oryx and Crake
14. Bel Canto
15. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Nominations have closed. My computer at home is down, so I couldn't close them on Monday. Voting to follow...
DJ: Small Island will be fine. It has not been covered.
The Rory Gilmore Book Club
