As suggested by @diapasoun we will take turns running the book club. This thread will service as a signup list for the coming months but new threads will be started for each book to be discussed.
Post a reply if you want to sign up and if there is a particualr month you want to sign up for mention that as well. If you don’t mention a month or just don’t care when it is then you’ll be listed in the order you sign-up.
I’ll keep a list going here so we can see who is up next and what books have been read so far.
Any other suggestions are welcome but for the most part I think each month can be “dealers choice” as far as how to run it.
"The Rules"
Page limit ~300 pages (or less)
No obscure or new release books (a lot of us use our local library and new release or obscure books are harder to get)
No graphic descriptions of physical and/or sexual violence (from what you can tell from a ~5 min “Google” search)
In the month prior to your month to host, select four books for particapants to vote on.
How do we want to do book selection – just whoever runs that month chooses? Or something else? (I feel like this is the most contentious part of most book clubs.)
I’m in!!! I need mental stimulation and I haven’t done a book club since I did the American Girl Club Book Club in elementary (LMFAO). Maybe I’ll be able to join one IRL later?
Re: Ground rules - Maybe no books over a certain amount of pages. One of my past Live-Action book clubs had a 300 page limit otherwise we would all show up and have to “fake” our way through the meeting or admit to not reading the whole thing. It was kind of fun if I managed to finish trying to figure out who hadn’t finished.
Agreed that a soft page limit is good. 300 pages may be a rough limit for novels, but yeah – 400+ pages is a wild ride for a monthly book club. Been there, done that, the t-shirt sucks.
I would also suggest no obscure books or very recent releases – these will both be difficult to find through libraries, and we should probably encourage library use something something finance forum?.
We may want to discuss format (get through X chapters per week? all discuss willy nilly throughout the month? etc)
For voting, what most matters IME is that people feel like their desires are acknowledged. I like the idea of the person running that month suggesting a few books, and then going for what members vote on – it’s almost exactly the version I did successfully IRL with a monthly book club for four years. That gives people an incentive to run a month while still giving everyone a bit of choice.
We should also discuss any hard NOs that community members may have with respect to subject matter. I would like to tentatively propose that graphic description of physical and sexual violence is avoided.
That’s a good point, maybe a week out, but in the current month’s discussion thread? Or we could utilize this thread for group feedback, rules and voting.
Does The Dog Die has a limited set of books and is a good first step for those, but otherwise won’t be enough.
I’ve usually found a google search of Book Title + Thing to be pretty effective for things like explicit violence. If folks want to propose a book but don’t want spoilers, I’m happy to do that searching for people – I don’t care a whit about spoilers.
ETA: Obviously we also can’t expect someone to know all the twists and turns of a book they haven’t read. If it can’t be found in five minutes of Googling, then no one should feel “on the hook” for proposing a book with Whatever in it.
