One LibraryThing, Three Books

I was thinking LibraryThing should try a "One LibraryThing One Book"-type program, like so many cities have done. (I think Seattle was the first.) Except we'd choose more than one book at a time. I'm think we could come up with maybe six categories of books, then choose one every other month for each—three books total.

So, for example, every month we'd have a LibraryThing-wide reads, like "History," "Science Fiction" and "Classics."

The goal would be to make sure there was something for most people every month—some book that, if it wasn't people's first choice, would still be worthwhile to read in a group.

What do members think of this idea? Let a thousand flowers bloom!

It'd be nice if it could integrate with the various reading challenges already running!

Sure. I like it. How would the books be chosen? Would there be a nominating and then polling time?

I see:
History
Science Fiction
Mystery
Literary Fiction
Young Adult
Classics (but how is that defined?)
Biography

#3

Regarding categories, would we want something broader for non-fiction than history and biography which are somewhat related? I'm thinking of books like Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power, which I don't want to call social studies.

Obviously, fantasy would come under SF; mystery might include suspense and thriller. I'm not sure about Young Adults and Classics. Is there enough interest for a Young Adult category. Of course, I've read all the Harry Potter series. Would classics include non-fiction like The Anatomy of Melancholy and The Origin of Species?

>4 vpfluke: 'Sociology' or 'political theory' would work for Crowds and Power. I just don't know if there is enough interest for a category like that though. ?

Sociology or political theory does sound a little restricting.

Maybe add a crafts/do-it-yourself category too (crafts, cooking, design, construction, mechanics, etc.)

>6 vpfluke: Social sciences? (would include sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc.) That might be broad enough.

OCCULT!!!

heh ...

 

#4

Obviously, fantasy would come under SF;

My goodness, them's fighting words! ;)

Too true, felius. Sometimes the twain do meet, but not always.

I don't spend much time in the challenge groups. Do any of them resemble a group-read really?

There are also a number of "group read" groups as well.

If you are sneaky you can get away with books that fill more than one hole. For example Farthing by Jo Walton (which is the current group read for the SF reading group) is published as SF but is also a detective story. Similarly The Yiddish Policemen’s Union could fill those two spots (and maybe also appeal to the mainstream fiction people because of his previous books).

Well, several members of the 999 challenge are doing a group read of The Brothers Karamazov in February. Classics seem to be fairly popular.

I will happily read Classics of the history variety. I'm much less likely to read Classics of the high school variety.

"Classics": that's Greek and Latin antiquity, right?

4> Nah, obviously the "SF" is for "speculative fiction". :)

>16 paradoxosalpha:

For me, but I was slumming. I was using the "Penguin" sense of classics.

Tim, I just checked the "classics" tag page, and was pleasantly surprised to see the top three works actually are embraced by the more restrictive sense of the term. Unsurprisingly, the top three users of the tag apply it in sensu lato.

Can someone who interacts with the challenge groups explain to me how they do and don't meet the need I identified—okay, guessed at—in my first message here?

I suppose I'm letting on that I don't socially understand my own site. That's a feature, though, not a bug. LT is beyond me :)

I like the idea of site-wide reads in addition to the challenge groups and specific group reads. It might bring people into a conversation that don't normally talk on LT. It would also be nice in that each book is a one-time commitment, rather than the long commitments of the challenge groups. If you have the selection open to nomination or voting then people that are hosting a group read in their own groups can make sure to vote, and align the LT read with their own reading goals in that way without necessitating any additional administration.

I can only speak from personal experience. I love the idea of a group read, but may or may not participate. What I don't like about it is that I *must* read the same book that someone else is reading *at the same time*. It is for that reason I don't belong to real book clubs and find LibraryThing so in synch with my reading habits. Here I can read whatever I want, whenever I want, and there's always someone in real time with whom to discuss my most recent read.

In the challenge groups I like the most (Reading Globally, The 999 Challenge), the category is picked, each member chooses and reads his own selected book within the challenge guidelines, and then everyone compares notes on one thread.

The other thing I've noticed about joining online group reads (not here on LT, though) is that people read at different speeds that don't mesh with my time for reading. Sometimes I'm slower, or sometimes I'm faster.

In a group read, there also *must* be a way to alert others to spoilers. No one wants to be told ahead of time what will happen in a book that you are reading with others.

My last thought is that a good moderator would be helpful to keep up a lively discussion in a group read and decide its terms (time frame, questions, etc.).

After all of this negativity on my part, I think it's a good idea, Tim! :)

I did 888 last year and am doing 999 this year. There is a thread in the 999 group called something like 'the category compiler' where a lot of us are listing our reading categories. Some of the categories are broad like history or science or contemporary fiction and some are more narrow like '1001 books to read before I die'.

ETA : I need to type faster!

In a group read I participated in last year, there were two threads established for discussing the book; one was clearly labeled "SPOILERS" and the other said "No Spoilers." People who cared about spoilers (like myself) avoided the spoiler thread until they'd finished the book. Not surprisingly, the discussion on the spoiler thread was much more interesting.

--> 24

That's a great idea!

You can always go back and continue the spoiler thread at a later time (as long as the thread is not permanently closed for some reason).

My question here is more basic, though. The 999 challenge group is for people to talk about the books they're reading that match the specific criterion. There's no coordination to read the same thing. A very different concept, right?

Yes, but there are several groups that coordinate to read the same book - Green Dragon, SF reading group, Group Reads- Literature, Romance group, YA lit group, and in the Virago group we are just starting our first group read. I'm sure I'm missing some others. Oh yeah, there's also that group(s) with all the adverts/sponsers too.

There are three group reads going on right now in the 2009 75 Books Challenge group. War and Peace, Don Quixote and something else I forget. It's strictly voluntary for the challengees, but so far the response looks good.

I love this idea. I don't think it's a problem that specific groups already have discussions like this or that not everyone would participate every time. I think it would be especially good for getting new users involved in the site; presumably links to the discussion would show up on the homepage.

For categories, it might be worth looking at the summary of people's 999 categories in this thread, which was mentioned earlier (message 93--I'm failing at making a direct link).

Also, isn't this a good opportunity to introduce a polling feature for selecting books? I know the individual group discussions would benefit from it.

--> 26

Right. My participation would depend on *exactly* which book was chosen and when.

So my question to you, Tim, are these:
How would the books be chosen?
Who would set up and moderate the group?
Would you have a way to avoid spoilers in group discussion?
How would One LibraryThing - Three Books be different (or even would they?) from those group reads already described by sqdancer in post #27?

If you chose the right book for me, I'd be hard pressed not to want to join.

My question for those doing group reads right now are these:
What are things you like about your group read?
What are things you don't like about it?
How would you do things differently if you were setting up the group read(s) for One LibraryThing - Three Books?

The bottom line: One LibraryThing - Three Books would be fun!

I'd be in favor of doing it in conjunction with those groups. If those groups are doing it, I want to know, and I want to have it somewhere accessible. Those groups are daunting.

T

That was my original point - if you pick books that "go with the flow" of the 999 challenge, for instance, you'll get more people on board.

>31 timspalding:

Basically, you want a central clearing house for group reads? Kind of like what SimonW11 tried to do here: http://www.librarything.com/groups/bookclubcentral ?

Yeah, but a *feature* so we could put notices on the book and author, show all the ones going on or coming up on a schedule, etc.

We could make it totally member driven, eg.,

If 10 people agree it's a good idea, it gets posted.
If 50 people agree that's a good idea, it gets scheduled for the next month.

Tim

Avaland also was trying to keep track of the various readings going on:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/29906

It seems to me that part of the appeal of the town readings is that everybody by a certain date will have that book in their experience. Otherwise the groups take care of individual schedules and tastes.

The advantage of the staff's taking interest is that everybody could be notified. Often enough very close to when one group is tackling a book, somebody will post elsewhere that they have taken on the book and would like to talk about it.

I don't know how much I would play if provisions were made for a LibraryThing book discussion.

Robert

I think a lot of things are best left to users. They make their own "features."

But I could well see that, if "feature-ized" this could mean:

*A voting system
*A central list
*A central schedule
*Notices on work pages and author pages
*Notices to people who have the book already
*Profile boxes saying where you stand on various reading proposals
*Reads you're actually doing

Well, we could branch the idea even further out. I have created the group LT's List of Great Books You Should Read. My idea was to let the members of LT create the ultimate reading list, maybe this group read thing would tie in nicely?

-37 I love all of those ideas. I think it is smart to make group reads more accessible and more obvious.

I've just been cruising the web looking for info on the "One Town One Book" concept (which I had never heard of before, probably due to living in a major metropolitan area), and find that the National Endowment for the Arts gives grants for participating in their version of the program, "The Big Read."

Perhaps we could convince them that we are a community! I'd certainly say many of us think so.

> 37

This list sounds awesome. Group reads and discussions are one of the reasons I like LT!

*A voting system
*A central list
*A central schedule
*Notices on work pages and author pages

I love all of these ideas, and think they could be incorporated well with the current reads going on in the various groups. It would be really nice to have a homepage module highlighting the book discussions that are already taking place, and links to those discussions from the work pages.

*Notices to people who have the book already

I'm a bit dubious about this one, since it could easily get annoying for people who don't visit the site often. Plus, I think this would necessarily limit the feature to the few books chosen for site-wide reads, and I'd rather just highlight the discussions that individual groups are already organizing.

*Profile boxes saying where you stand on various reading proposals
*Reads you're actually doing

I don't really understand what you mean by these ones. Does the second mean it would say on a profile, So-and-so is participating in the group read of X? That would be nice, but I'd rather have a full currently-reading feature based on start/finish dates and collections.

I think LT-wide group reads would be a good idea because people who aren't savvy to the groups and various group reads would still be able to participate without spending a lot of time hunting the right groups.

Also, a centralized nominating and polling system would be neat.

I'm thinking multiple threads, say chapters 1-5, 6-10, etc. (or page numbers or whatever) could easily accommodate people starting at different times and/or reading at different speeds and also keep the spoilers confined to sections so someone reading chapter 3 doesn't see what is happening in chapter 20. Some books may have obvious dividing points others could just be chosen in equal increments.

Could the voting be built into the works page? Maybe a button to click on, something simple like the thumbs up for reviews? Then maybe a list somewhere to see all the books that have been voted on?

A central place to track group reads would be good as I'm often not aware of them until they are well advanced or maybe not at all. If a proposed book fit my challenge I would try to find a copy and participate and I suspect the same is true of a lot of people. The multiple threads idea seems to work for those who have tried it.

The ideas pretty neat. In the Green Dragon, we've found that having 2 threads for the discussion work best, a really large book might be split into 3 but we seem to avoid them. As staffordcastle said, 1 is spoiler free, the other is no holds barred. It seems to help keep the discussion going and people don't have to worry about spilling something early on a wrong thread. Every now and then we decide to group read another book, we post some suggestions and everyone votes on what to go for. Depending on the book some people will join in and others won't, and we tend to have about a 6-12 week window of people starting and finishing. I don't think having a site wide group read will take anything away from the group level reads and might even help. Just be aware, groups might try to sway a read for a month by having the group vote on the site choices...