The Catholic Book Club discussion
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Mod
1. We maintain a Voting List of 15 books (16 in certain circumstances).
2. You may nominate books that you would like to read in the nominations thread. If the tie to Catholicism or Christianity isn't obvious, add a short explanation of why you think we should read the book.
3. On or about the 15th of each month, we will start the voting from among the books on the Voting List. The end of voting will be posted in the voting thread.
3. After voting ends, the winner will be deleted from the Voting List. In addition, other books that fail to get sufficient support will be removed from the Voting List. These books will be replaced from the Nomination List.
4. On or about the 1st of each month, we will start a discussion thread for that month's BOTM.
5. All of this is explained in much more depth, and you can nominate books for the Nomination List, here.
Mod
Sure, you can nominate a book for consideration as often as you like.
Mod
Sure, but a word to the wise. If you don't take part in any of the discussions or nominate other books or vote, please don't be surprised if your book isn't selected. That would give the appearance that you didn't have interest so much in reading and discussing Catholic books in general, but only in flogging sales for your own book and that's not the purpose of this book club. (We do have a "Promote Yourself" thread for the purpose of allowing authors a specific thread where they can feel welcome promoting their books.)
Mod
Absolutely. (Truth be told, this is not an unheard of problem for your moderator.) The current BOTM will be pinned to the top, but we maintain a link to all past BOTMs . It doesn't matter when we read it, if you just finished it "now," feel free to post your thoughts in the thread.
Mod
Sure. As we grow we will inevitably have new members who want to read as a group a book we have already read and some books are so good we may want to read them over and over again. Bottom line: If a book is nominated and gets the most votes, it will be the BOTM.
Mod
Sure, but please keep this to the thread established for that purpose: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
This rule will be enforced as necessary by the moderators by deleting posts promoting one's work placed in other locations.
What counts as "promotion"? If the main purpose of the post is to draw attention to your work, please place it in that thread. Obviously not every reference to a work is out of bounds, such as referencing your work in a book discussion in the same way you might say "C.S. Lewis makes a very similar point in ________," so long as it is relevant. Ultimately, the moderators will decide. And to be clear, this is not a bright line standard that applies across the board - if you are an active participant in the reading and discussions, you will get a lot more latitude when you reference your own work in those discussions.
Why do we care? Please forgive me for being blunt, but we are not here for you. This is a group for people who want to read and discuss what they've read in the light of the Catholic faith. We are not an advertising platform for authors. When I first went looking for a Catholic Book Group on Shelfari years and years and years ago there were several, but they were all dead. Any post by a reader looking for someone to read and discuss Catholic literature drew responses from authors interested only in pushing their own work. These were dead places: I doubt the authors sold, or even gave away, any work and there were no readers. So I decided not to let that happen to the Catholic Book Club and we have always restricted posts promoting an author's own work to the "Promote Your Work" thread.
How are book discussions handled? Do we get together once a month, via video chat or a live chat, to discuss the current book?
We don’t meet together. There are threads for each book, and everybody posts their comments as they read.
Mod
Hi Joanie, as Mariangel said, we don't try to get together for live chats. Given the global spread of our members, it would be difficult to coordinate a time that worked for everyone. I would also be concerned about the impact of the deadline a live discussion of the book would imply and whether that would encourage or discourage reading. That said, none of these problems seems insurmountable and such a discussion could be arranged if there was interest in the group. I will raise this topic in the Atrium, which reminds me, we need a new Atrium for 2021.
To Moderator - how to add a book to the bookshelf?
To O.Z.: Only moderators add books to the bookshelves, and those are the books we have read, are currently reading or are in our current voting list.If what you want is to nominate a book for consideration, you can post in the nominations thread:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
We take an expansive view of what constitutes a "book" - basically anything that constitutes an integral document, books of the bible, novels, saint's lives, encyclicals, counsular documents, etc. Finally, though this is probably obvious, any book that is nominated should be "catholic," though we mean that in the broadest sense possible. If the book you nominate doesn't seem to be an obvious choice, please explain why you think it is relevant to this group.