Nominations for group reads

[Werner]

Jackie, good questions! To answer the first one first, this group is a year-around thing; we exist primarily for ongoing conversation about early American literature that we're currently reading, or have read, as individuals. (To be sure, we don't have as many comments as we used to when the group first started and our founding moderator and some other early-joining members were still active on Goodreads, but that's another discussion.) Check out our 120 discussion threads, and chime in wherever you want to!

As to the second question, message 36 above gives some of the background of how the annual June common read was adopted; but it's important to realize that this was never intended to forbid doing other group reads during the year, if people in the group actually want to do them. (So the idea then was, do at least one a year, not "do ONLY one a year, and no more!") Any group member can also suggest multi-person buddy reads, here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... .

Next month, I'm going to be reading Benito Cereno by Herman Melville, for an annual group read in another group, though because of other reading commitments I'll have to start it later in September. It's too late to post a poll; but if the members commenting on this thread are interested, we can certainly do that book as a group read or a buddy read in September. (It's quite short, so won't take most people an entire month to read.)

[Rebecca]

I recently ran across the fact that June 2026 will be the 200th anniversary of the publication of The Last of the Mohicans, so this seems like an appropriate suggestion for a group read next June.

[Pamela]

Rebecca wrote: "I recently ran across the fact that June 2026 will be the 200th anniversary of the publication of The Last of the Mohicans, so this seems like an appropriate suggestion for a group read next June."

Love that idea!

[Werner]

I've read The Last of the Mohicans twice, and it earned four stars from me. If it's picked as our read, I can definitely contribute to a discussion of it!