The Not a Book Club Club discussion
Group Feedback: Scheduling Group Reads
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Read in March: Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, and 3 short non-genre booksPlan in April: House of Chains (finish in Apr), hopefully Grace of Kings or Rebirths of Tao but the library is letting me down
I know you keep counting the Malazan read but I think that exists separate from the rest of the group. There's only a few of us reading it (and, some of us [me], are getting way ahead of the read).
Here's how I look at this group. If there's a book/series being read that I want to join in and discuss, then this is a place where I can discuss it. For example, Malazan. I wanted to read that series but it moved up in my queue when some other people showed interest. But if books come up that I'm not interested in (Elizabeth Bear, Mark Lawrence, Django Wexler, etc), I feel no obligation to join in. That's for other people and not me.
Maybe the lengths of some reads can be adjusted. eg: Its not likely that reading Dragon's Path would take as long as a Malazan book.
As long as people are participating, I don't see a problem. If it gets to a point where there's 7 reads and for 2-3 of them, there's only 2 people discussing it, I'd scale back.
Mod
That's what I feel too. I gave up on trying to participate in all the reads awhile ago.
Mod
Yeah. I guess. I'm just having trouble resolving all those at the same time having participants.
I dropped out of the Malazan read, as I cannot keep up. I'm still going to read the books, but I haven't even started on DG yet. I'll still be benefiting from the discussion, though, as after each section I rush to read what the rest of the group had to say about it. Since I have such little reading time, I'm starting to think group reads may not be the thing for me...
Rob wrote: "Dara wrote: "As long as people are participating, I don't see a problem. If it gets to a point where there's 7 reads and for 2-3 of them, there's only 2 people discussing it, I'd scale back."Yeah. I guess. I'm just having trouble resolving all those at the same time having participants."
It's really up to you. It's your group - if you want to cap the reads at say 4 per month, we'll be more selective of what we read and when.
I participated in all the group reads in march _except_ RoG, and plan to participate in all the group reads in all the group reads in April except Shattered Pillars. I do think the reads are scheduled for too long. I think the only effect the date has is what is shown on the group home page as currently reading, and if we look at it as just a place to discuss books we are interested in, then if you start a bit early or finish a bit late it doesn't matter.
That said, I feel it is getting a little out of hand, I have other extra-curricular activities besides reading, and I know I probably can't keep up this pace for much longer :) I hope we keep all the current reads we have scheduled but when proposing new reads (especially multi-book series) we think more about the long term impacts on the calendar.
I am also fine with a cap.
Mod
I'm just trying to understand how we're suddenly scheduled to read so many books at once.
We had 4 reads in January and 3 in February. So that's a big jump.
Did the group grow much in membership over that time? Or did people become more active? When were the reads originally scheduled? I wonder if it got a new years resolutioner bump ;)
I think having unlimited number of group reads per month is fine as long as people are participating which they seem to be. It seems like there are a lot of newer members particpating which is cool. I did the dragons path and half the world in March. In April I am planning on doing kings blood, rebirths of tao and grace of kings. I might have joined in on malazan if nothing else was going on but it would be a reread for me so I wasn't bothered missing it.
If it is adding pressure or stress on you than limit the reads. I think part of the problem is that we read a lot of new releases and then every new installment in the series we started. I like that about the group but it does have a snowball effect.
Mod
But the number of what I'd consider "active participants" has largely remained the same, because we've lost a few of the original active participants and gained a few new ones. It's maybe slightly higher right now.
2 of our top 10 posters, don't post here anymore. Meanwhile Justine who has been about 2 months is already in the top 30. I think it shows that we have a large number of lurkers.
Then there are a few others who have posted a lot, but haven't really participated in group reads much.
Mod
It's not adding any pressure. It's just been bugging my OCD a bit.
I do have to update the bookshelf a lot more, but that's about it. I don't think Alex has realized that good reads isn't smart enough to do itself (though it should be), and I haven't bothered to mention it before now because it's not a big deal.
So I manually have to move books between to-read, currently-reading, and read to properly update the front page. And if I don't remember to move a book from read/to currently read I have to go digging for it because it IS smart enough to not show books whose start date have passed on the upcoming reads section making it slightly more work to move it from to-read to currently reading.
I'm a bit obsessive about the numbers (go figure) and often times it seems like most new people join because we're reading some new book that just came out that they are reading. But then most of them never seem to participate in the discussions.
It's sounding like this might just be a bunch of smaller reads when in the past we've had a few larger reads instead.
It also sounds like we should nix any month long read times for all but door stoppers like say Malazan or Stormlight Archive. And maybe those should be 3 weeks instead of 2. I dunno.
I love the comments/discussions more in this group than most - plus we are often reading stuff I want to read anyway. Looking at the list, 3 are duplicates - listed both months (as you know) which maybe helps a little with sheer numbers. I feel a little guilt I've been so slow on the Elizabeth Bear books, but I"m glad there will be a discussion for when I eventually read them. I enjoyed the Half a King discussion last month, and I'm liking the Dragons Path discussion, even though I'm not chiming in a ton since I'm not re-reading that. But yes, do whatever makes it less stressful for you Rob!
Mod
It's more like me seeing a sudden shift and wanting to get some input on it.
I think my biggest take away from this is maybe reducing the read windows of books, because I agree who will still be reading Dragon Path?
I have been told that the group is intimidating before though. Would a new member look at the group and go "holy crap 5 books? I can't keep up with that!"
I think so long as people are like..hey I want to read/discuss one of those books and ignore the others..that's fine.
I just feel like we don't really have enough active members to be supporting all those books at once in general.
But the reality is some of them won't be.
So I'm going to cut down any group reads longer htan 2 weeks to 2 weeks save for Malazan which I'll let Alex do whatever with.
And if one of those reads falls on it's face because people are overloaded with can reschedule if people want.
Mod
I've pretty much stopped committing to any new books through the summer already. :)
As a fellow obsessor over lists, I think I get it!I've read all of the Malazan books that are on the list, and all of The Dagger and The Coin up until the newest one (naturally), so I wasn't planning on doing much participating beyond occasionally commenting in discussion threads.
I am planning on reading the two remaining books of The Eternal Sky (and will make the sections today! promise!) series, and I have been considering reading the Tao novels but am not sure I want to invest in reading three books to join in on a discussion on one of them. Planning on starting the first and seeing how taken I am with it. I have so many open series...
I am a new joiner, and am perfectly happy just following the crowd. I think it's inevitable that not everyone will read everything, if only because you'll have people who've already read stuff or don't have access to specific reads.
Rob wrote: "eanwhile Justine who has been about 2 months is already in the top 30."There is a highscore?!!
:-D
Mod
I'll be at the bottom of that.... I lurk a lot. But I read all the discussions. ALL of them. :-)
Mod
Um, woohoo? I wonder if they just take the stats from the last month or two, though. I find it hard to believe that I've made that many comments in a month. Then again, I do talk too much in general.
I've enjoyed your comments Robyn! (And Lindsays and Justines) - yay for new people! And yay for "old" people too - I think I mentioned above that I like the discussions in this group a lot. Even the books we dislike sometimes generate great discussions - I recall one on cannibals - and the magic system with the neutering - fun to talk about.
Aw! I blush. But you're totally right, Suzanne - I can say as a newcomer the conversations all feel open and welcoming and are very entertaining.
Mod
Nope. All time posts. You're 29 with 65 posts.
And You talk too much? Check my post counts sometime. Here and in S&L. :-)
Wow! That's more than I realised. Right, then, I deserve my spot!And I rather think garrulousness is a good quality, when, well, the whole point is to discuss the books! Plus, Rob, you must have so many admin type duties - that's got to drive up the count.
Mod
That is awesome. No one will ever catch you!
(This isn't the place for it, but Goodreads is being majorly buggy for me - I can't open any discussion threads that I haven't gotten a notification for, among many other problems - and of course it happened right when I was creating the discussion threads for Shattered Pillars. If there are accidentally 1400 of them or something, I apologise.)
Mod
Sometimes. But I don't let that stop me! Check my post count! ^_^
Yes, I'm still reading Dragon's Path. I stalled a bit, but I try to plan to read books until the end of the scheduled time. It is not always possible to jump in at the starting time and pushing my way through the whole book in one short time-frame.When I'm late, then often the discussion stalled because most engaged readers already moved on to the next shiny thingy. That doesn't motivate much to add comments besides trivial ones (e.g. "liked it", "didn't like that character"). I solution to this problem of late-comers could be a more engaged moderation - not by Alex or Rob, but by those that brought up the books, i.e. a discussion-lead. On the other side - it is not a book club here, right? ;)
That is why I don't participate in series reads - you are often in the middle of it and I don't want to read the previous books. Sometimes, I simply missed the start (like with Bear's current series read or the Malazan) and feel overwhelmed.
But that is no problem for me: I just cherry-pick group reads here. I can't see an obligation to read each and everything.
Mod
Some people just blow through the books and jump right to the final discussion. And some are slower/comment as they go. I tend to be the latter. Maybe because I read slower/less.
I've never had an issue jumping into the discussion late. Often times I don't get a response as Andreas mentioned, but sometimes I do. It really all depends. Typically the early and late threads get a lot more comments than the middle ones do.
My big take away from this group (which is what I hope it is for you) is that I'm no longer struggling to find someone to talk about all the books I read and enjoy.
There are still some I read on my own, but most of the big ones get read here and read right away so that I can discuss them when they come out like I prefer to and not have to wait months until friends/another book club reads them.
Thanks everyone for the feedback. I'll keep an eye on things and see if this becomes a trend or if it's just an outlier.
I think things are fine. By opting to read a fair few books at a time it increases the likelihood that any individual group member is going to be participating in at least one of them. That's got to be good for group discussions and good for me personally. The group reads lots of epic fantasy, and while I do read epic fantasy, it's not my favorite sub-genre, so I'm picky.I'm not a fan of the Malazan books and I skipped Half the World. So for this month it's only been The Dagger's Path and Range of Ghosts with the Shattered Pillars only taking up the last three days of the month ... that seems entirely manageable to me.
Just a note regarding time frames: I tend to drag out my club reads to better participate in discussion. Read a section, read a different novel, read a section, read another different novel ... repeat. Even doing that I've never taken longer than a week to read a club pick. Two weeks is plenty for me, but I acknowledge that I'm at the extreme end of reading speed.
There are a fair amount of scheduled books to participate in, and i will pick and choose. I like to read another book between a fairly heavy series (Malazan for example), so it could take me 2 months to read each book. However, i do pop in for the discussions and read what other people have put - as i generally miss the obvious sometimes. I think the times could be reduced to 2 weeks for a book, and try to not have more than 2 running at the same time. I think the last couple of months have been hectic due to the number of new releases.
All in all, this is an important group because the suggested reads match my tastes.
I blame Sky for agreeing to join me on starting Malazan ;)But seriously I think like most people I kind of pick and choose which reads I'll participate in and don't feel pressured or burdened if there are too many (maybe that's part of the problem). I do like when the group is reading something I've already done, like Dagger and Coin, so I get to see the series with fresh eyes. The discussions here tend to be very interesting to read through even if I'm not directly participating
It almost feels like a big group for buddy reads. If only two or three people are wanting to read something and they get a place to discuss, I think that's pretty neat. I never actually thought about the admin responsibilities of this (adding the books to shelves, starting the threads, etc) so I can see how that might become time consuming for our wonderful mods.
And I like not having a vote or polls for reads, personally. Think that tends to give too much power to people who might not engage in the reads, just see a poll and say "hey, I like that! I'm voting for it!"
I'm also a go-with-the-flow kind of guy so I'm down with the consensus if the group changes the operation of scheduling reads. Personally I like the laid back way it is now, but that can make scheduling things kind of difficult like with Malazan and the proposed Crux read. Especially since I tend not to check the calendar
Sorry, TLDR
Thats true...Malazan started with Scott mentioning he was going to start, and I was planning to start too, so we were going to do a buddy read. then Alex jumped in saying he wanted to do a re-read, and others jumped in as well and it became an official group read :)
That's part of why I like this group, how things naturally just happen like that. And I've much enjoyed the Malazan reads so far
Mod
I just don't want so many reads going at once that there are some no one participates in, or that people have to skip one read they would participate in because there is another one they want to do more at the exact same time.
Of course the latter can't be helped sometimes when 2 books you want to read come out on the same day, which I know is the case in April for some of you.
I have totally lost track of where this was discussed, but were we going to reschedule the Dagger and Coin books because of the Spider's War release date being changed? I know that was discussed, but I can't remember where or if any decision was made. I'm kind of like Lindsay...I try to spread out my group reads so I can participate better in the discussions so I just wanted to know so I don't charge ahead on that in error! I only just got around to reading this thread...but it seemed like this was the right place to ask this question even though this isn't where we discussed it originally (obviously!). I guess I should read more carefully seeing as my name came up a few times and I didn't even realize it. :)
Mod
It's in the last place you'd ever expect it to be..the Suggest A Book For A Group Read thread. :-D
And sorry to use you as an example. You just happened to be an active member who was new at the time of this thread.
I really don't mind...I just thought it was funny that I hadn't read the thread!:)
Rob wrote: It's in the last place you'd ever expect it to be..the Suggest A Book For A Group Read thread. :-DSee...more proof that I'm easily confused...that's why I end up putting all my read comments at the end sections instead of the nicely made chapter divided sections.
The Not a Book Club Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Half the World (other topics)Gardens of the Moon (other topics)
Range of Ghosts (other topics)
Deadhouse Gates (other topics)
The Dragon's Path (other topics)
More...
So the group has grown a lot in the last year, and become super active. Which is great. But it also has me worried with the loose rules on group reads that things are getting out of control.
Maybe it's just that the thing I created has outgrown me and I need to let go. Or maybe we need a little more procedure. I don't want to turn this into a normal book club though with too much procedure and/or voting. That would kind of go against the name/intent.
I brought some of this up in the MOI general thread which really wasn't the place for it.
So in March we 7 group reads that were started or ended in that month.
Half the World - 2015/02/17- 2015/03/03
Gardens of the Moon - 2015/02/21 - 2015/03/08
Range of Ghosts - 2015/03/01 - 2015/03/28
Deadhouse Gates - 2015/03/09 - 2015/03/29
The Dragon's Path - 2015/03/16 - 2015/04/12
Shattered Pillars - 2015/03/29 - 2015/04/29
Memories of Ice - 2015/03/30 - 2015/04/15
In April we have 6. With the overlap, we'll technically be reading 5 books between April 7th and the 15th and 4 until the 21st.
The Dragon's Path - 2015/03/16 - 2015/04/12
Shattered Pillars - 2015/03/29 - 2015/04/29
Memories of Ice - 2015/03/30 - 2015/04/15
The Grace of Kings - 2015/04/07 - 2015/04/21
The Rebirths of Tao - 2015/04/07 - 2015/04/21
The King's Blood - 2015/04/13 - 2015/05/17
I really only envisioned ever reading 1-2 books at a time, and maybe 2-3 books a month. But I'm a slow reader. Obviously most of you are not. Maybe you all are doing every single read for NABCC.
Personally I do maybe 4-5 books a month, and at least one of those is for another club, and I like to have some freedom to choose other things and/or I have books I review for SFFAudio from time to time.
So is the issue I just read to slow and had too low expectations?
Is it that we're scheduling reads for too long? I mean Range of Ghosts was given a month. People started it at various times, but did it need a month? I generally schedule our reads for 2 weeks. I don't want to make them too short to discourage people who maybe can't start right away from participating. But do we need a to give a book a month simply because it's part of a series and we're starting the next book a month after we started the first book? Could we do 2 week read, 2 weeks off and then the next read (and schedule a different book for that 2 weeks off)
Or are there just a bunch of small groups not interested in most of the books and therefore we just ended up with so much on the calendar at once?
I personally only read Range of Ghosts in March, though I did catch up on 1 group read I had missed out on in February while I waited for my copy.
Or are we being too ambitious/people are forgetting what is on the schedule already and scheduling more? Part of that clusterfuck is probably because we're doing 3 series: Malazan (10 books), Eternal Sky (3 books) and Dagger & Coin (5 books) at the same time.
I'm not even sure why we're doing Eternal Sky since the guy who drummed up support to do it didn't even bother to show up/participate in the first read. But there is at least 3 or 4 people who expressed interest in doing book 2, so that's fine.
And it appears that I'll only be reading one book in April (Rebirths of Tao), maybe 2 if my hold for Grace of Kings comes in, but since I'm still waiting on Half the World, I'm not holding my breath on that one.
So let me know what you think. And which books you were/plan to read in March and April. I'm curious to know. Thanks.