The Group Reads Set-Up?

[Holly, That Geeky One]

Hi everyone,

A key part of any group I think is it's group reads. It brings people together, and can definitely help people keep going when they hit a bad patch of reading.

Due to the wide variety of the group and it's members, I was considering doing three group reads each month, to cover the main sections of reading. Of course, you don't have to take part, it would just be a nice way of making people band together!

I was thinking these three group reads:
- Contemporary (perhaps books since 2000)
- Classics
- Young Adult

What do people think? Would you consider joining in and voting? Or is three too much?

[A]

Holly wrote: "Hi everyone,

A key part of any group I think is it's group reads. It brings people together, and can definitely help people keep going when they hit a bad patch of reading.

Due to the wide variet..."

Hey Holly! I love the idea of this. I myself am a mod of a group and have this system too. Just have two suggestions-

Maybe u shouldn't fix any genre for the group read and make it genre-free. I mean, if you're gonna go ahead with the monthly genre challenge, then better not set a genre for this coz maybe it'll be a little too much for the readers....

Keep the group reads of 'any genre' and set up a nominations folder where members will suggest books of 'any' genre. Then u can shortlist books from the nominations and put them up for a poll to vote on.

That's all!- these are just suggestions, I'd be happy with anything you intrduce in the group:)

[Liân]

What Ruchi said :)

[Holly, That Geeky One]

So you don't think separate them? I just think otherwise it will be very hard to get people to join in as there is no set genre for the group. That's why I was thinking more than one, so we can get a bit of variety, just like the group will have a lot of people with a large amount of variety...

[Liân]

I think more than one would make sense, because it's nice to have a choice, but at least one of those choices should be an anything goes sort of category, because I think just having say 3 fixed genres for a group that isn't genre focused is far too narrow.

[Holly, That Geeky One]

Taking into mind, Contemporary, Classic and YA books can be of any genre, it's just the age range/time they were written. For example, you could have a dystopian YA book, a mystery Contemporary and a romantic Classic.

Or we could have Classic, Young Adult, General?

[Liân]

Classic, Contemporary, General would be my choice I think.

[Holly, That Geeky One]

That would work.

How would you define Contemporary then?

[Faye, The Dickens Junkie]

I like Classic, YA, General myself. We have to keep in mind that we have a wide variety of readers in this group. The monthly genre challenge is going to be stretching people's limits already, so we don't really need to be doing that for the all-around group reads, too. We need to channel the nominations down a particular road if we're going to get the pickier readers to join in. If we open the nominations for any genres and age ranges, every group read is going to get the same nominations every time, and the results will probably exclude a lot of the members who would have skipped the Classic read and participated in the YA read, or skipped the Contemporary read and participated in the Classic read, etc, if you see what I mean. Having 3 group reads going on at the same time that cover 3 distinct literary audiences would cover the largest amount of members, in my opinion.

[Liân]

That's a good question actually - I don't think I've ever really pinned down my idea of contemporary literature. I suppose, for me, I guess it would mean books that are written for a modern audience, (with modern meaning the last 50 years or so), so modern setting, modern language, modern issues. But that feels like an oversimplified definition. I feel like I have to go look it up now!

[Liân]

Faye> the reason I prefer "contemporary" to "YA" as a category, is because I think YA is a subgenre of Contemporary by and large. I just think it's better to keep the categories fairly broad.

[عماد]

I really like the idea. And I think the first three genres you mentioned ( Contemporary, Classics, YA ) are good. There is no need to change them.

[Holly, That Geeky One]

Faye, that's a very good idea. I think if we don't have YA, many people would feel left out as it is a large part of Goodreads.

[Liân]

But isn't YA a subset of Contemporary fiction anyway? And something that would fit into the general category anyway - so it could theoretically be nominated in two spots without it having its own category?

I just worry that by forcing a narrower selection, people will skip more reads more often. Eg if there was someone in the group that didn't like YA fiction, that would be one category they would never choose from every single month. I think narrowing choice just in case people hypothetically might block vote one genre out from selection in 3 categories every month (which lets be honest, doesn't really seem that likely) is not a good solution. It's more likely that with classics, contemporary, general as categories 2/3 will be YA than none of them.

[Liân]

But I'd suggest just picking the 3 categories you want, Faye and Holly (as moderators), and then see how it goes, if nominations are thin in one category and bloated in another, then you can always rejig it at a future time.

[Holly, That Geeky One]

That's true. Nothing has to be set in stone.

Why don't we trying YA, Classic and General, and see how popular YA is? If it's not very popular, we'll trial run Contemporary at the same time and see which is most liked?

[Faye, The Dickens Junkie]

We could always put contemporary/YA together in the monthly genre challenge?

[Faye, The Dickens Junkie]

The idea of having 3 group reads at the same time is so that people will have a choice of group reads to participate in. If we only have 3 members participating in the YA group read, that's fine. As long as they're enjoying themselves, numbers don't really matter. There will still be 2 other group reads for others to enjoy, so nobody will be missing out. We certainly don't expect everyone to participate in all 3 group reads every month. :)

[Liân]

I understand that Faye - my concern is some people will permanently face a choice from only 2 books instead of 3. But my worry may be entirely unfounded - anything in here right now before it's been tried out is only guesswork :)

[Faye, The Dickens Junkie]

We'll also have member-controlled buddy reads going on at the same time, so there should still be lots for people to choose from. But as Holly said, nothing will be set in stone. We're open to changing things as we go along. Thanks for your input! :)

[kisha]

I would join as often as I can. I love group discussions. However, I would agree that if this group isn't genre oriented than setting genre specifics for all three books may be a bit much. I would advice setting it to whatever genre is in the reading challenge for the month. That would make it easier for your readers to not get overwhelmed with books and will probably get more participation. Good luck either way!

[Faye, The Dickens Junkie]

Good idea, Kisha - we could have at least one of the scheduled group reads correspond with the monthly genre challenge. What do you think, Holly?

[Holly, That Geeky One]

I love the idea of merging the group read with the genre challenge. That would be really effective!

So, we could have:

Genre Group Read
Classic Group Read
Young Adult Group Read

[A]

Holly wrote: "I love the idea of merging the group read with the genre challenge. That would be really effective!

So, we could have:

Genre Group Read
Classic Group Read
Young Adult Group Read"

Ok! That'd be cool...:)