Poll

To me the idea of a minimum or maximum is unnecessary. Really, all you need is a mention that 450 is pushing the limit of completing a book in a month and let participants decide. The Stand, while atypical, is actually a great example. Everyone decided that they wanted to take on a larger book, a plan was worked out, and POOF it worked. If you have a book that clocks in at 451 pages, is it allowable? No. Would people make an exception. Probably - if it didn't suck.

I'll edit it to add the no maximum option. The thing is, I have seen from doing this for so many years, the longer the book, the less likely people are to commit. (And the chunked book discussions don't work wonderfully.) Still, let's add it - if it gets a great response then we can try it out and maybe it'll work well.

Back when I was only about this group on goodreads, I would have gone big. But as this community sucks me further into its culture of thoughtful discourse and reading challenges, I have moderated my enthusiasm. I think 400 pages is a nice middle of the road figure with a strong caveat that, like W. mentioned, it's a loosey goosey rule of thumb and not a hardline fundamental.

I vote for only books that have the term "loosey goosey."

W. wrote: "I vote for only books that have the term "loosey goosey.""

that might limit our reading selections to only books by authors living in the midwest and its diasporants.

I think we should only read books that have embossed letters on the cover, and the main character is a raccoon.

S. K. wrote: "Back when I was only about this group on goodreads, I would have gone big..."

Wait... you're cheating on us? :-P

I would say around 500 pages, but that it should have some wiggle room. Like 10-20% over is OK, or if everyone goes YES LET'S DO THAT DOORSTOP one month, we just go with it.

Gertie wrote: "Wait... you're cheating on us? :-P"

You mean this wasn't an open relationship?

I voted for 450. I really don't know why. It strikes me as walking in the middle.

The Stand worked well, but we all agreed to it. We made it work.

S. K. wrote: "Gertie wrote: "Wait... you're cheating on us? :-P"

You mean this wasn't an open relationship?"

You can be as much of a slut as you want, as long as you don't forget about us. :-P

Jennifer wrote: "I voted for 450. I really don't know why. It strikes me as walking in the middle.

The Stand worked well, but we all agreed to it. We made it work."

I think that's to the point though... If you set a minimum, some people may not even nominate a book they consider to be awesome because three lines of it spill onto page 451. There could be an awesome zombie book that (ahem) somebody wants to discuss, or some old chestnut that a reader dusted off that nobody else has heard of.

Better to have a rule of thumb than a minimum if you want to be able to table the book.

Gertie wrote: "I think we should only read books that have embossed letters on the cover, and the main character is a raccoon."

I think we should only read e-books with embossed letters on the cover!

I vote small (that's me at the low end of the poll!), because yeah people don't commit to big books often. I co-moderate a group that reads China Miéville (yeah, sorry, Gertie, I'm cheating too), which pretty much means we DO bigger books, but it's also pretty niche (and we haven't had any interest in his latest, which is only a novella). We've had pretty good success with chunking the discussion, but it really needs somebody to be right on top of things to get the next "chunk" going at the right time. Not my forté...

You mean maximum W.? There has never been a minimum.

I am thinking we'll probably end up making a (strong) suggestion of 400ish but no actual maximum.