The Future of Book Club...

I would be interested in participating in the book club no matter what form it takes. I think assigning the reading discussions to those referring books may work. It would be interesting to see how the response is. I enjoy the referalls on the site but the book club helps with focus so i dont end up buying 12-15 books i wont have time to read till next year. Thanks for all your hard work Jeff. If you want me to assist in the book club just email me. Im not the most well read cultist but I'll try to help out.

No matter how much they say they want to, I haven't seen much evidence of people being able to maintain a decent book discussion around here. I tried getting one going once about "House of Leaves," a book with endless interpretations and all I got was a bunch of people saying how much they loved the book. Nothing with much depth. People would rather yuck it up in general discussion.

Maybe if there was someone leading the discussion, throwing out topics or questions to start it off, there would be more participation?

The only reason I picked Happy Baby up was because of book club.

Whatevers clever Trevor.

It's hard to get this kind of thing started...what works for one group of people doesn't for us...we just have to figure out what works.

I'd say being able to vote from five books for the book to read that month would be a good idea, but when we did that it seemed like everyone was only interested in the voting and when it came time to discuss...nobody really did. I think it got to where we had books picked three months in advance and working on the fourth? Something like that. Anyway.

I do think the key is that we need a leader of the discussions. To ask specific things. Sometimes this just pops up on it's own, sometimes it needs a lot of help to get going, and sometimes it just dies that particular month.

I think more discussion worthy books would help too. I mean...I liked Syrup and Hey Nostradamus, but didn't see much to talk about other than if you liked it and which part was your favorite. Slaughterhouse 5 was a great choice for this part, but for some other reason just didn't work.

I think all we're going to get, without someone to lead us in a direction, is general discussion. I know for me, at least, it takes someone else to get things moving in my head to really think about a book. Then I start seeing themes, symbolism. It's all in my head but I don't always realize it and put it all together until someone else starts it up. I don't know why heh. The thing is, this person has to be very patient, because only a few out of however many questions or thoughts they post will end up being discussed. It would be hard to think of things too, because you have to do it in a way that gets others thinking and everything. But yeah...I think this is what we need. I really think a lot of people on here want the book club, we just don't know what to do with it.

[QUOTE=sheenUGH]The only reason I picked Happy Baby up was because of book club.

Whatevers clever Trevor.[/QUOTE]

I did that with Syrup, Hey Nostradamus, Reasons to Live (would've gotten that one later is all), and The Man who Fell in Love with the Moon (and then his other book). Almost got Battle Royale, but didn't really want it. And then I plan on at least looking at Happy Baby because of bookclub.

It's a tough call this whole book club thing. Seems to me its kind of been guided. Try to tie in this place with the author exclusives and the chuckshop. But I think you've done what you could do and thats just the deal away from general discussion. How many books (IN THE REAL WQRLD)have I suggested in the course of just the last month that fell on distracted ears. It's almost depressing at times. Here is someone new I want you to read and the crowd remains silent with a few whispering exceptions. That just it. I'm too pretentious and really the only way I give in to something new is if I barter with someone. The whole community thing, I'll do this if you'll do that. I said before you sat in the moderator seat that we didn't really need a leader and you surely haven't done that at all. You can say we need active participants but who the hell are they? The same people actively participating in the WW and the chuckshop? We need discussions? We need topics to talk about? Maybe we just need different gimmicks and a different sales pitch? I think there are some things you could do to make it better, Like letting long time prolific readers who have a great love of writing about what they have read pick the book of the month. Utilizing 'soandsoisnotamemberofanygroups option', like the WW might be fixing to do. Give participants the feeling like they are a part of something and not just a voyeur overlooking someone elses thread. Give them a web page that doesnt look like shit. Which was what I thought the whole change to the book club was going to undergo at first. And give them not just choices but a voice. I hate being told what to read. And what sucks about book clubs is it almost drive me away from the reading the books. I couldn't believe that Oprah went and put her name on Steinbecks book and now Marquez? Just when you think you got out of someones grasp... So who the fuck really knows what will work. Maybe we could plug someone else thats just now breaking out in print. Maybe we can read some maintstream Cyber Punk bullshit. Maybe we can break apart the boring ass Scarlet Letter. And maybe we can have the greatest intentions and best ideas and still get mediocre participation and skepticism. And maybe I can voice all of this from the sidelines.

[QUOTE=PsychoKeety]I did that with Syrup, Hey Nostradamus, Reasons to Live (would've gotten that one later is all), and The Man who Fell in Love with the Moon (and then his other book). Almost got Battle Royale, but didn't really want it. And then I plan on at least looking at Happy Baby because of bookclub.[/QUOTE]
I'll probably get all of those just to catch up.

Like a couple of other people mentioned, maybe having specific topics for discussion (in the form of a homework assignment or whatever) would be good...

I know that in my head, there are often so many different ideas running around in my head after reading something new, it's hard to know where to start talking about it. Specified topics would at least provide somewhere to start talking about it all.

I also know that in my head, it's only really fresh for about a week.

I don't know, how about having four discussion topics for a book or something? They could be discussed in the four weeks that book is "the book". I guess that goes against my point about having it fresh in my head for only a week - perhaps the four topics could be given at the start of the month, so people could make points from the start of the month, only the discussion focusses on that topic in week 1, 2, 3 or 4...

Then again, this may be a stupid idea...

Having said all this, I struggle sometimes to get hold of the chosen book... Something like Happy Baby that I can't seem to find in Australia, and by the time Amazon manages to ship it here, it's all over...

I spend most of my time lurking, so take these points from an infrequent poster with a grain of salt, and promptly choose to ignore them if you wish. (Also, I typed this the other day but forgot to post it, so if I am repeating what others have already said, too bad)

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I think there are 4 ways a book of the month can be chosen:

1. As the book club currently does - 1 book posted each month by the moderator.
2. A round robin approach, where 'notable' posters on the forum are given the power to pick a book for that month - a book they are VERY interested in, and hopefully, 'knowledgeable' about.
3. A selection of books are nominated, and the most popular book becomes the designated read for the month.
4. No designated book - just a free for all.

Now point 1 (and also point 2 to an extent) doesn't work that well here in this place. Personally, I don't like been told what book to read - well actually, it isn't as simple as that; if I have a selection of books at home queued which I am really keen to read, and if the book for book club is something I have no interest in, then it is pretty obvious which book I will read. In the current book club I have had zero interest in any of the books so far, except for Slaughterhouse 5, and maybe Hey Nostradamus to a certain extent...

This leads into point 2. This still has some of the problems associated with point 1, but the key advantage is there will be a greater variety of books put up for reading, based around the fact that we all have individual tastes and interests; a mixture of personalities behind each selection should encourage a more interesting mix of books, in my opinion.

Point 3 introduces a little more freedom for the reader, because they can play an active part in the book selection. A selection of 3, maybe 4, books is the way to go. This selection could just be random books the moderator (or moderator for that month) is interested in exploring, or it could be a selection based around a certain theme.
e.g. This month the books up for nomination are selections from the 2003 Man Booker shortlist (Vernon God Little, etc)
OR
This month the 3 books are all books based around multiple 1st person narrative (Trainspotting, As I Lay Dying etc)
OR
This month the 3 books are all MacAdam Cage published works (Happy Baby, etc...)
The problem with this 3rd option is, people will vote for a book, and then no bastard will read it (I'll admit that is something I would probably do myself)

Point 4 is the easiest to implement because you don't have to do shit, but it will mean the end of a focal book for a month.

Each discussion really needs to be led by the moderator, and the whole thing prompted and babied through the month. See, I've never been to a face to face book club, but I would imagine book club meetings with a pint in a pub being much more conductive to free spirited debate, simply due to the fact that you are in the one place at the one time, and concurrently you are getting pissed. On the web, people are detached by time and distance so discussions become less free flowing, and the thread can collapse into a set of essays where other readers may begin thinking they are in a lecture (though personally I've got no problem with this), or to a set of informal posts where people just say 'Yeah, I really liked the book. Cool cover, huh?'. Hard to strike that balance, but that is what the moderator can try to resolve.

While I am rattling on - the whole book club web page needs to be redone. I didn't even know there was a bookclub page. More links on it; links to author interviews, reviews and analysis or the current and previous books etc. There is another thing which I thought could be worthwhile, and that is subsections for different authors on the web page, plus on the forum. So you could have underneath the book club forum an Author's forum, and underneath that specific sub forums for Hunter Thompson, Delillo, Vonnegut, Salinger and who ever else you want. That way, instead of threads about Hunter Thompson being spread through the whole bookclub, they could be collected and referenced in his specific folder. This will also stop more meaty articles about an author (posts by people like HD etc) slipping to the backpages. More maintenance required by the moderator I guess for this idea of individual author sections, but there is always the possibility that it will attract futher readers to the book club, esp. people who are not as interested in Palahniuk.

One final thing for both points 1 and 2 up above which I forgot to mention - in my opinion we should piss off the idea of associating a book selection back to Palahniuk; just because he liked reading Ill Nature on the toilet doesn't make it a great choice for book of the month for a book club - the number of people who read it confirms that. Why do we need a reference back to Chuck all the time (and no, just because this is a Chuck website is not reason enough)?

Thank you, and goodnight.

i'll spare everyone the rehash of things i've said before about book club, but i think giving different people a shot at leading book discussions is a great idea.

edit: forgot to add something. not all of us on this site are writers, or want to be writers. some of us just like to read and therefore don't choose books on the basis of what it can teach us about writing. to continue to push the book club choices and discussions in that direction is to alienate the people writers need most: those of us who read for its own sake.

[QUOTE=NoMercuryAdded]
I think there are 4 ways a book of the month can be chosen:
1. As the book club currently does - 1 book posted each month by the moderator.
2. A round robin approach, where 'notable' posters on the forum are given the power to pick a book for that month - a book they are VERY interested in, and hopefully, 'knowledgeable' about.
3. A selection of books are nominated, and the most popular book becomes the designated read for the month.
4. No designated book - just a free for all.
[/QUOTE]

The first three are great ideas. The last one is too vague. So we have in depth discussions about whatever book we just read? It won't work unless more than one or two people are familiar with that book. One of my major problems in this book club are the themes of the books chosen. While, admittingly, I wasn't coming in this area of the forum often, the few times I have seen the bookclub selection, the choice had some kind of homosexual theme. Gay Indians, gay hookers, etc etc. While I have no problem reading about gay people or works by gay authors (obv.) I like to think that I read more topics than that. I missed out on the Slaughterhouse 5 discussion. I would have read that one and would have loved to have read others thoughts on it. The 10 million different takes on the same book is what drew me to cp.net in the first place, when I had questions about Diary. More themes need to be explored. If I was from a larger town, I wouldn't have a lot of these problems, but the library sucks here. It's tiny. I don't want to spend $12 on a book that's uninteresting to me. There's not a lot of discussion about the non-book club books because (at least for me) I"d hate to ruin a book for someone and attempting to discuss a book that only one other person has read is kinda useless. If there were more books that appealed to a wider audience, this book club thing would work out better. OR try to find books that a lot of people read and enjoyed and have that be the selection. This way there will be people who've read the book, verifying that it's not a waster of time or money and those who've already read the book will re-read it to brush up on it.

Jeff-
Have you posted links in other forums- general, writer's workshops, movies, etc. regarding the book of the month or 3 weeks or whatever? I'd read along if I knew what you were reading, what we were going to be discussing, and the time parameters. I've been on this site a few months and just happened to pop in here. My own fault, but I think some info links to other forums might generate more interest. Perhaps a bunch of people could "sign up" to commit to the discussion after a book is chosen. Just throwing out some ideas.. .

Here's an idea stolen from an art site that I used to contribute to. . .we voted and picked on 12 art masterworks that we would copy, one for each month of the year. Perhaps, in the same vein, we could vote on/choose a book a month for 3 months ahead of time, (I have a feeling the rate of turnover or need to re-eval would necessitate this.) which would give people a chance to procure a copy, and decide if they're going to be able to participate.

my 2cents-- a month and a half is way too long.

Hey everyone,

I have to say, in the past few weeks I have been worrying about Book Club myself. So seeing Jeff's thread here and the kick-ass suggestions and feedback you are all giving him is just great.

Here are my thoughts:

- I agree that the #1 way to help book discussions is to lead discussions through assignments. This doesn't mean I'd prefer that Jeff ask you all to go home and write an essay on why religion plays such a big part in "Hey Nostradamus." Rather, you can bring the assignment TO the forums. So when discussions open for a book, Jeff posts a thread and pinpoints a number of key topics that run rampant throughout the work. That way you give the members of the club something more tangible to discuss than the book as a whole. B/c who reads a great book and can just encapsulate every element of said book into one post? It's too difficult. I could talk about a novel like "American Tabloid" for days, but if you asked me on the spot about it, yes, I'd give that typical, "It's great..." answer. Whereas, if you asked me about the character of Kemper Boyd and his affection yet jealousy for JFK in the novel, THEN we'd have a fucking discussion.

So yes, we can't simply have a post that reads, "Okay everyone. By now you should have finished Slaughterhouse Five. Discuss." That's not gonna work. We need to cut through the whole of the book and gets to its core, via its themes, best scenes, and characters.

- I'm not sure I like the idea of multiple books. Sort of defeats the purpose of taking a chance on one book and keeping things more centralized. And the voting process has been tried in the past and failed. People spent more time and energy voting than they did discussing.

- I agree that not every book need tie into a Chuck essay. I personally am not a fan of many of the books and authors Chuck loves. I have no interest in Hempel and never even attempted Spanbaurer. I may be naive, but like someone else in this thread said, I always have a large queue (sp) of books lined up that I'd always prefer to read first, before picking up something like "Ill Nature." So yes, let's go with more curveballs.

- Here's my final thought, and that is that the actual format of a forum isn't always the best place FOR discussion. See, the problem is, everyone has their own notebook... their own platform... their own post. And that post becomes too independent to the nature of the thread. Everyone just wants to get their own 2 cents in. I see this all over the place on forums. Someone will go and type up a passionate post about their favorite movies and WHY they love them so much. Then, in the reply post, a new person will enter the discussion, but rather than participating, they'll just go on and list all THEIR favorite movies, which is sort of selfish and defeating of any conversation that had a chance to brew.

So I think the answer to this is simple: [b]Let's bring the monthly discussions to the chat room.[/b] Wait, just hear me out. People are still free to post their thoughts here if they don't like the immediacy and pacing of a chat room. But that's just it - [b]that immediacy in discussion is sorely needed.[/b] Not to mention, if we provide weekly chats about the book of the month, then everyone has a place to meet at once, and conversations can flourish and evolve. Hell, the conversation moderator can even copy and paste the whole log of the night and repost it here the next day. So people who missed out on the discussion can catch up. JRR Tolkien fansite [url]http://www.theonering.net[/url] does this (or used to) and it proved to be very affective as an archiving tool for past discussions and site topics.

Don't forget, we have a very easy to use mIRC channel for this express purpose that, right now, is sinking into oblivion. So we could kill two birds with this idea. Saving the chat room AND the book club at once.

If enough people are interested in this, and Jeff or someone else wants to host the weekly sessions, let me know and we'll set a time, date and discussion topic for this coming weekend and see if it works.

Comments?

i like that chat idea, but then i'm always there and no one else is, it'd basically be free for book club discussions, and if for whatever reason you'd want it, i log the convos so you could get the transcripts (then you could say, reread what someone said) ToRN did this as dennis said, and it worked great.

The chat and message board is a great idea. I forgot we even had a chatroom. That way maybe discussions can come up the way they naturally come up, in an actual discussion and then be built on in the message board too. When people have a day to think about it, and remember something else, they can post about it. It's hard to get everyone in the same place with different time zones and different lives going on, so we do need both.

So has there been a decision made on how the book club will be handled? I like the chat room idea along with some message board talks afterwards to continue the discussions if the cultists decide to continue the talk. Has there been a book chosen for july? If not some suggestions that I would like to read are D. Eggers "A Heartbreaking work of staggering genius." Or anything by david sedaris.

While I think the first one would be great, I think Sedaris is kind of hard to discuss. Don't get me wrong, I like Sedaris, but there's not much you can say about his work other than, "I like/ didn't like such&such."

we could talk about how is sister is hot

Dennis, I couldn't agree more with this. I've seen a lot of complain about the level of postings for the bookclub and It seems to me we have to remember not everybody its a literary critic. Guidence is need.

[QUOTE=Dennis]Hey everyone,

I have to say, in the past few weeks I have been worrying about Book Club myself. So seeing Jeff's thread here and the kick-ass suggestions and feedback you are all giving him is just great.

Here are my thoughts:

- I agree that the #1 way to help book discussions is to lead discussions through assignments. This doesn't mean I'd prefer that Jeff ask you all to go home and write an essay on why religion plays such a big part in "Hey Nostradamus." Rather, you can bring the assignment TO the forums. So when discussions open for a book, Jeff posts a thread and pinpoints a number of key topics that run rampant throughout the work. That way you give the members of the club something more tangible to discuss than the book as a whole. B/c who reads a great book and can just encapsulate every element of said book into one post? It's too difficult. I could talk about a novel like "American Tabloid" for days, but if you asked me on the spot about it, yes, I'd give that typical, "It's great..." answer. Whereas, if you asked me about the character of Kemper Boyd and his affection yet jealousy for JFK in the novel, THEN we'd have a fucking discussion.

So yes, we can't simply have a post that reads, "Okay everyone. By now you should have finished Slaughterhouse Five. Discuss." That's not gonna work. We need to cut through the whole of the book and gets to its core, via its themes, best scenes, and characters.

- I'm not sure I like the idea of multiple books. Sort of defeats the purpose of taking a chance on one book and keeping things more centralized. And the voting process has been tried in the past and failed. People spent more time and energy voting than they did discussing.

- I agree that not every book need tie into a Chuck essay. I personally am not a fan of many of the books and authors Chuck loves. I have no interest in Hempel and never even attempted Spanbaurer. I may be naive, but like someone else in this thread said, I always have a large queue (sp) of books lined up that I'd always prefer to read first, before picking up something like "Ill Nature." So yes, let's go with more curveballs.

- Here's my final thought, and that is that the actual format of a forum isn't always the best place FOR discussion. See, the problem is, everyone has their own notebook... their own platform... their own post. And that post becomes too independent to the nature of the thread. Everyone just wants to get their own 2 cents in. I see this all over the place on forums. Someone will go and type up a passionate post about their favorite movies and WHY they love them so much. Then, in the reply post, a new person will enter the discussion, but rather than participating, they'll just go on and list all THEIR favorite movies, which is sort of selfish and defeating of any conversation that had a chance to brew.

So I think the answer to this is simple: [b]Let's bring the monthly discussions to the chat room.[/b] Wait, just hear me out. People are still free to post their thoughts here if they don't like the immediacy and pacing of a chat room. But that's just it - [b]that immediacy in discussion is sorely needed.[/b] Not to mention, if we provide weekly chats about the book of the month, then everyone has a place to meet at once, and conversations can flourish and evolve. Hell, the conversation moderator can even copy and paste the whole log of the night and repost it here the next day. So people who missed out on the discussion can catch up. JRR Tolkien fansite [url]http://www.theonering.net[/url] does this (or used to) and it proved to be very affective as an archiving tool for past discussions and site topics.

Don't forget, we have a very easy to use mIRC channel for this express purpose that, right now, is sinking into oblivion. So we could kill two birds with this idea. Saving the chat room AND the book club at once.

If enough people are interested in this, and Jeff or someone else wants to host the weekly sessions, let me know and we'll set a time, date and discussion topic for this coming weekend and see if it works.

Comments?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=NoMercuryAdded] While I am rattling on - the whole book club web page needs to be redone. I didn't even know there was a bookclub page.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I'm no fan of that page. I rather the book club page be integrated into the overall site. I'll have to check with dennis to see where we are in the to do queue.

[QUOTE=NoMercuryAdded]in my opinion we should piss off the idea of associating a book selection back to Palahniuk; just because he liked reading Ill Nature on the toilet doesn't make it a great choice for book of the month for a book club - the number of people who read it confirms that. Why do we need a reference back to Chuck all the time (and no, just because this is a Chuck website is not reason enough)?[/QUOTE]

The thinking behind that was two-fold. First, it is the Chuck site, so it seemed natural to have some tie-in, that would seem to be the unifying force of why people are on this site at all, no? I like the idea of reading his teacher, other people who came out of the Dangerous Writing community in Portland, just to really nail their mindset and have a better grasp of the confines of their writing and how they work with that.

Second, the piggybacking seemed like it might make sense as far as getting more readers. I mean, if Chuck says Ill Nature is one of his favorite books in the world or somesuch, it seemed like more people might check it out, and therefore more people would want to discuss it. But, if anything, the Chuck-selected books seemed to attract the least attention. Personally, I am on the site because it is a Chuck site, I have stacks of books I want to read in my apartment.

This summer, I am personally planning to use Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature" book, based on his lectures on the works of Austen, Duckens, Flaubert, Joyce, and Proust, etc., as an outline for my own reading and learning. So, to me, that seems sort of "out there" for the Chuck site, but something I'm really excited about.

I'm a very slow reader, in the sense that the chestnuts and lessons I will learn from a book aren't immediate evident. I don't put a book down and have its answers. That will occur a few months later, when I find myself writing something and know it is something I subconciously picked up from sebold, coupland, chuck, etc. In fact, I go out of my way not to think about it, because I think that works out better in the long run.

When I look at [url=http://www.albomfivepeople.com/readingguide.htm]reading group guides online[/url], having never picked a book that had one available yet, it just seems like homework to me.

But we'll experiment a bit and see what might work better.

i just got here yesterday. and having not read any of them.. i'll go pick up "sarah" next time i can. anyway... i couldnt picture having a good literary community without book clubs. if what you're asking is do people agree with your choices, hell if i know. but u might have the community email you suggestions.. this way its more theirs. but as i said before, given we're all interested in writing (or at least reading) id say we need a book club or else we're just another lame forum online

after this memorial day weekend, 1 more week of class, then finals...

Ohio State University is nice...but End of Spring Term 2004 = a bitch.

I cannot wait to get back into The Cult and see what you guys are up to... x_x