LibraryThing Online Book Club

One of our members privately emailed me to see if anyone would be interested in hosting an online book club.

Since we'd never all agree on one book, we'd each take turns choosing one book for the month, and we could start a thread on the boards for discussion that folks can contribute to as they're reading/finishing the book.

What do you think about that?

-Jen

I'm very interested in this, and, actually, the thought had crossed my mind before. If anything is decided, please let me know, and I'm up for reading whatever. My interests are many and varied, so feel free to suggest anything.

Sounds great! We do this in the Read YA Lit group. Suggestions are made, a book is chosen and then read and discussed. Check our our current discussion of Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.

Finally, an online book club! I've been trying to participate in a book club for several years now, but what with being at university in a small town, it's really hard to do such things unless you yourself are the host--and I'm not quite ready for that yet.

And while I do think that YA Lit is great (I am absolutely in LOVE with Stephanie Meyer!), I think it would be cool to be able to read all kinds of literature, from the classics all the way up to modern. Maybe it's possible to find something online. I'll check sometime.

If anyone's maybe interested in co-hosting something, send a comment my way. I'm not necessarily good at being a host, but maybe with a few people working together, it could work. -MissLizzy

MissLizzy--I didn't mean you needed to join our discussion (but you can if you want), I just wanted to give an example of what an online book discussion could look like.

I would love to do it, but I am involved in too many book clubs right now (3 YA ones--one online and 2 in person at the school I work at and 1 adult which I host). I might be able to participate on occasion, so I look forward to one developing.

SheReads, I have a question for you. I've only participated so far in off-line, real life book clubs.

How does an online book club work?

Does someone introduce the book? Do we read it by a certain deadline? Do people post their comments as they're reading the book or just when they're finished?

Firefly7522, I'm so looking forward to our online book club, too! :-) What do you suggest for a genre? I love everything from classics to sci-fi to YA lit. Anything you're in the mood to read more of?

For our online book club, I kind of have been running the thing because I started the group and I do that for part of my job, so it seemed like a natural extension.

On Read YA Lit we have a suggestion thread, where people make suggestions about what books to be read or shouldn't be read. From that list and people's comments I choose a book. We have thread that just lists the schedule which I started to make it easier to find what the upcoming book is. We do it monthly and December is only our second month of discussions. I try start the discussion thread as close to the 1st of the month as possible. Of course the thread stays out there and people can continue to post on it, but it probably isn't visited as often as the current months. Feel free to check out our group http://www.librarything.com/groups/readyalit#forums.

Check out the Green dragon groups aproach.

The Patrick White Readers' Group had a very interesting online discussion of one of this writer's books.

Now, there's also an online book discussion being conducted at Undercover, which is run by the daily broadsheet The Sydney Morning Herald.

PWRG's discussion was successful, it seems to me, because they gave people a lot of time to actually get their hands on the book in question. And then read it.

Undercover I think is struggling because the book chosen is out of print in Australia and they've had to get copies shipped specially from the States, where it is still in print.

I'd be interested in participating in an online discussion group, as long as there was enough time to procure and read the chosen book. I think this is an important aspect of the exercise.

Dean has a point - we definitely need to give ample notice and time to procure & read whatever book we choose. Ideally, maybe we could find some books that are somewhat easy to find at our local libraries.

Ever since I saw (in another thread) the top 100 sci fi titles, I've been interested in reading and re-reading some of those. Would anyone else be interested in a sci-fi bent?

Another tact we can take - We could switch it up and have each of us pick the book for one month next year, say, starting in February? That would give ample time for finding the book after the holidays.

What do you think?

I love this idea, even though I don't know whether I actually have time to read any more books.

I like reading sci-fi, but it might be nice to do a variety of genres, starting with sci-fi.

I think I prefer discussion about what to read next, as opposed to one person just choosing. But I also liked the suggestion someone made in another thread, where one person lists 5 titles and then everyone votes. As long as everyone gets input somehow.

Ooh, I like that idea, Zoe - then we won't get stuck with any tedious books (one hopes!). :-)

Okay, I'm going to start looking online now and making my list of 5. I'd love to hear your suggestions, too.

Just for kicks, there's two lists I'm checking out:

The Top 100 Sci Fi Books

1001 Books To Read Before You Die (and there's also an LT group of the same name)

Zoe I really like that idea as well. I was just whinning/wishing that LT had polls like Yahoo Groups. I think I may change to this method for choosing monthly books for Read YA Lit.

Thanks a bunch!

I'm up for whatever. I'm interested in the different genres, too. As far as picking what to read, my opinion is this. We take turns. Say we decide to read one book each month to discuss. Each person is designated a month (or whatever time frame we use to read the books and discuss them) to be the "leader." That person will list 2 or 3 genres to pick from, and all the other members will have, say 2 days to decide which genre they would prefer. The one most voted for will be the genre we read for that time. Then, the same person will look for 3-5 books in that genre, list them, and each member will vote on the one they want to read. The one with the most votes is the one that is read. This way, we all have input, and it will likely work out to us reading all types of genres.

As far as the actual time frame we give to read the book, and how we set up the discussions (do we discuss chapter by chapter, or just read the whole book and then discuss? I prefer chapter by chapter, or at least sections...otherwise I think vital discussion points may be missed), I don't know. I've never set up anything like this, so I'm just grasping at straws. But, these are my opinions. Let me know what you think, if you agree or disagree, and we should all agree on a date to start this reading group, so, like someone stated above, we've all had time to purchase or somehow acquire the book.