Beautifully Written Fantasy & Science Fiction discussion
Is 2 books a month too much?
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A little bit of both I guess. I think one theme to focus on at a time would be good. Maybe we take a month off to allow people to catch up, and get some more discussion going on the next pick?
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I'm leaning toward that solution, Rich. One pick/month is much more manageable. My vision was for this group to be a bazaar of discovery - a place people could come to find beautifully written genre fiction (which isn't easy to find without the help of others). I didn't ever want people to feel there was a reading schedule to follow or that it was expected that they'd read every book we picked... But we're just not getting enough discussion on the books we do pick, so I'm going to focus us a little more.
We'll stick with the books we pick being up on our shelves for 3-4 months which should give those who want to read each book ample time to fit them into their schedules.
Sounds good. I think the vision is right, but maybe we need to ramp up to it gradually. If threads become overfull or die out long before the next pick we could change the frequency.I'll look forward to jumping in to the existing books!
I think there's absolutely nothing to lose by experimenting with the format. As Rich suggests, you can always switch back to the old model later—or try something else!Also, even a group with infrequent new picks can become a "bazaar of discovery" over time because anyone wanting more can view the group's "read" shelf and find good recommendations there, if not ongoing discussions. And with the multi-month shelf life, anyone wanting to discuss a current book would still have a variety to choose from (which I feel is important).
On the other hand, I do think that the lack of nominations for the second theme this month was probably a genuine fluke. In and of itself, it needn't be taken as a sign that the current system is failing.
Yeah, I do agree on the second theme this month. Part of it may just be that it was a tough theme, I was intrigued to see what people suggested because I was definitely struggling. I wonder if it would be worthwhile having a thread (or maybe we need a shared Google doc or something) dedicated to listing potential future themes and books to go with them. That way we can all contribute as we discover books we want to read, and when it's time for a new theme we have a couple of picks to get everyone started.
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I didn't understand the second theme and couldn't think of any books that fit, was all.
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I don't know if this is the best place to post this, but I was just wondering... Are we going to be picking a new book to start in February?
Originally, I intended for this group to be a place where we'd have many discussions happening at the same time. 2 books new books every month, read over a 3 month period - which gives us 6 books being discussed at once. I wonder if that's really working. Would we do better with a slightly narrower array of selections? Maybe just one book per month (still read over a 3 month period)?
The idea was to make room for not everyone reading every book we picked, but still being able to participate in discussion at any given time. Do we need 6 books going at once to live up to that ideal? What's currently happening, which may be a result of having a very broad reading schedule, is that there's not a lot of focused discussion happening on any of our picks. Do we just not have enough active members, or are there too many options?
What do you guys think?