Yes, nominations - or subtractions if anything currently listed is striking folks wrong. I tried to hit something from most of the major genres other than Romance.
I’m thinking we’ll go to poll on Friday, which will give a couple more days for suggestions. I’m thinking we wrap the poll up around the 7th if not before. That should allow time for folks to pick up the first book to work on prior to holiday shipping/shopping becoming a real problem. I’d also suggest we do this first poll as quickly as possible (given real life), so that we keep the ball rolling, and don’t let this get lost in the holiday festivities.
One other thing we need to think about: when to start the first discussion. Things should get easier once we get rolling, but I am assuming we need some lead time on the first one for folks to get into it. So how much? Are we thinking this is a discuss as we go along, with some marked out “no spoilers past page X” points, or are we thinking we read the whole book, and discuss the work as a whole, without worrying about spoilers?
I think we should do this in two-week, or half-month chunks, with the assumption that most people can probably read about 100 pages/week. So for a 200-page book, allow two weeks and do the whole book; a 400-page book, have an OP after two weeks for the first half, with anyone who wants to read ahead using spoilers to say something about the second half of the book.
Or once a month, with a 300-page limit? What do people think?
My suggestion is nothing more than 350 pages. More than that and half the people aren’t going to be able to finish. I seem to see a lot of new books that fall squarely in the 300-350 page range. Less would be fine too, but it may be too restrictive if we have a hard 300 page limit.
So is this the thread that we can throw out suggestions in, to be included in the poll?
Thanks for stepping up, deathawk, even if it’s only for a little while.
Sorry if I put you on the spot, twickster, when I asked you to organize this. I didn’t mean to. If you keep doing what you’re doing now, that would be good.
I really don’t like the idea of discussing the whole book at once. I like the 100 pages a week pace, and think every two weeks is a good way to break it down, if not further. If we do something like that, than any mention of anything that happens after the page we are reading up to together should be put in spoiler boxes, but anything up to that point is fair game.
I really like deathawk’s list of candidates. I’d be willing to read any of those books, provided I can get it at the library (I’d feel weird asking someone to send me a copy). I don’t know how well the HP Lovecraft one would work just because ISTM that this type of thing would work better for a novel than short stories, but I’ve never done this before so I could be wrong.
How is voting going to go? I would think that the best approach would be to rank them in order of interest, but as far as I know the SDMB doesn’t support that kind of poll.
Also, I think we should come up with a process for nominating books for the next polls. Just adding whatever people mentioned works okay this time around, but unless we do ranked voting, it could lead to problems if there’s an unbalanced ratio of participants to book options.
you can make do with multiple choice. either vote for the books you’re willing to read or vote out those you’re unwilling or unable to. you’ll get ranks for books in order of participants, which is more important since it gives you a list of books the majority of voters will/will not want to read.
How do people feel about every two weeks, vs. once a month? I think I prefer the more frequent schedule – my short-term memory fades fast, and if I do the reading at the beginning of the month and the discussion doesn’t happen till the end, I would definitely get less out of it.
I will have the poll up in hopefully less than an hour. Working on some formatting prior to setting it up, then things will be ready. This will be multiple choice as shijinn guessed at. I’ll have detailed instructions in the poll.
Since the poll options are non-complex here at SMDB, it will be just as easy to add two options at the bottom - one for 2 week intervals, cover 1/2 the book (or more), the other monthly (cover entire book).
