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Books, I read them ...
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Ha! Nice Xeno.
Dave, didn't Directors Cut have analog support?
Children of Dune, even in audio form, is proving difficult to focus my attention on. -
Xeno: SSSSSNNAAAAPPP.
RE: directors cut might've had analog support. I have the game, I could check and quell my raging emotions about it. -
Definitely behind the book club idea. We should have people submit a ton of books, then someone can randomly pick one from the pile until we run out, then solicit suggestions all over again. I'll happily volunteer to take/catalogue/randomly select suggestions, if that's a method people support.
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If it's something you guys wanna do, I can integrate it into blog posts for visibility.
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I would be down with this. Are we going for scifi/fantasy books (they seem to be a popular choice around here) , or are we including all fiction (maybe rotate genre from book to book). Should we just submit the tittle and author or should we include a brief argument for why the book should be chosen. Should we go for a book a month? or maybe every 2 weeks or so?
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All good questions, my dear Jakker. I'm going to suggest the following:
- No limit on book types - I'd hate for this to be limited to one genre of fiction, or to genre fiction at all; indeed, some people would be shut out almost completely depending upon how those restrictions were styled, so I'm thinking the general idea for book suggestions would be this: "Would you honestly recommend this book to other people as a redeeming work of prose/poetry?" We're smart kids here. I think. Sometimes. We should be able to keep the content consistently interesting using such a measure.
- I'd say author/title would be enough, again presuming the suggestions are made in good faith.
- Considering my work schedule, a book a month would be easier for me. However, there may be others with even more demanding schedules; also, the preponderance of the group may prefer two or three weeks lest they wait so long to discuss it that they've half-forgotten the content. The reasonable view seems to be 1) supermajoritarian OR, barring a supermajority, 2) whatever treats the most restricted 1/3 most fairly.
How do those answers sound as the beginning of a structure? -
I think a month to read a book is reasonable. Both in time to actually read it and time to retain any thoughts you might have on it.
I'm 100% for an idea like this, I don't read nearly often enough and having a defined goal would probably help that. Also, I tend to not travel too far outside my safe zone (shitty D&D style books) because of lack of exposure or will to experiment.
Oh, and yes Resident Evil: Director's Cut did in fact have dual shock support. At least the version of it I'm cradling in my bony fingers. -
xenomouse said:
I recommend this for the first book:
http://www.amazon.com/HTML-Dummies-Ed-Tittel/dp/076450214X
Hilarious.
This book had an excerpt posted on Ars Technica. It's non fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/History-Internet-Digital-Future/dp/1861897774
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As much as I like this idea you all know that every month the book is going to be a Lord of the Rings book. It will be an endless loop of hobbits walking.
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Sounds good. should we have a new forum category made for it? that way we can have multiple threads on the book (that way it's easier to avoid discussions on chapters you haven't read yet) or I remember them doing something with twitter to do a worldwide book club for American Gods. and most importantly, this book club needs a name.
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Location is being worked on, presently. I've been pondering the discussion setup, myself. I think it would be interesting to take the high points of the discussion and turn them into a blog post for easier public consumption. Here's a question, though: do we want ongoing discussion, or do we want to have people finish it and then talk about it all at once?
A name, sure, that'd be a good idea. -
I think an ongoing discussion would work best if we had a separate forum section, that way we can have a thread for each chapter or so and we doing have to worry about everyone being on the same page (If one person is on chapter 2 they wait till they are done with that chapter to join in on the chapter 2 thread). But if we just have a forum post for each book, then I would be best to wait and talk about it after we are done reading. How do you feel about collections of short stories or novellas/novelettes? Going through my library I found quite a few collection of them and I think they could be good book club setting since they are quicker to read and we could discuss the individual stories more regularly then a full novel (this book for example http://www.amazon.com/New-Space-Opera-Gardner-Dozois/dp/0061350419/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300885969&sr=8-1). Also maybe we can do some sort of monthly podcast with a few people discussing the book to go along with the blog post.
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Your mind is tracking mine identically, sir. I had thoughts of old Harlan Ellison short story collections cropping up, and I figured there'd be some questions about that format. I say that anything is fair game: poetry, prose, short story, long story, non-fiction, any of it. It's fair to say "make the length reasonable," I'd think. For example, even if it were easy to track down, I wouldn't put Vollmann's first edition Rising Up and Rising Down on the list, as it is ~3,300 pages long and is ill suited for the purposes of the group. The book you linked is completely fine in my view. (Reasonable length for a month's reading strikes me as about 1500 pages.)
The podcast notion was on my mind as I drifted off to sleep last night. I'd definitely want to get that going, too, yeah. Once we get some of the other framework in place, we can start plotting that element out more specifically. -
Should we decide on a book for April in the next few days? We can use April to work out how we want to set this thing up. I've gone through my library and picked some books i haven't read yet (and a few I have but are worth rereading) as my recommendations. What about we have everyone post one or two recommendations and then vote on it on the 25, so we have time to get a hold of it by the beginning of next month.
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Sure, why not? If those interested would use this Survey Monkey form to suggest ONE OR TWO books each, that'll get the ball rolling.
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I agree with the ongoing discussion format. It lowers the requirement for involvement and provides an opportunity for people to involve themselves in a discussion well after the rest of the group has finished.
My suggestions are in. I didn't suggest Snow Crash because everyone should have read that by now. -
As a suggestion, breaking things into separate chapters is probably a bit too much busy work. It's probably better to separate the book into four parts and focus on one a week. Managing, say, 20+ threads for a single book sounds like a pain in the ass, and reading 20+ threads for a single book sounds really inefficient.
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That is an excellent point.
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Noted, D&J! Ongoing discussion seems to be the favorite, so let's run with that. The weekly suggestion thing is a more structured version of what I was thinking: books in thirds. I was thinking less of the temporal connection and more of the "how much of a book do you need to have read to begin making meaningful comments on it" point, and I recall from my English major days that you either read the whole damn thing or at least 1/3 before beginning discussion. A quarter would be sufficient, though, for a motivated group. So what I'll do is post threads that work this way:
(Book Title) (Week Number) (pp. X-Y or ch. A-B)
Sound sensible enough? -
Sounds good to me.
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How do we see the results of the SurveyMonkey poll?
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I haven't had a chance to mess around with that part yet. I figure I will leave it up until Friday. I will see if I can get a link up for up-to-date results when I am home tonight.
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As I guessed, all the useful features are Pro ones, and I'm using a Basic account. I've got another way to do this next time, but for now, this will have to do. I'll just post the results when I close the survey. For now, five responses are in, so folks can feel free to tack on a few more books. I'll be adding a couple into the pot when I can make up my mind!
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We could always just post our recommendations on this board over the next few days and then just vote for the one we want on Friday.
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Well, that'd be a different mechanism. I was just going to do random selections based off what people put up there, that way we'd theoretically get around to everything, and everything would have a fair shot at getting chosen. If that's not acceptable to folks, speak up.
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That's probably the best way for stuff outside of most peoples comfort zones to get picked.
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Yeah, that was my logic. I'll design a much more submitter-friendly form for use in the future so people can keep track of what's been submitted/confirm their submissions/whatever.
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Just as a reminder, I'm closing the book suggestion form this afternoon, so if you want to make a suggestion, follow this link to do so. As soon as I close it, I'll post the full list and the randomly chosen book for April.
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I just got this from amazon today
http://www.amazon.com/Bertrand-Russell-Bundle-Writings-Routledge/dp/0415472385/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1302733877&sr=8-4
It's 81 essays Bertrand Russell wrote on the subjects including (but not limited to) himself, linguistics, mathematics, science, philosophy, morality, religion, education, economics, and government. It's divided into 27 parts, each one on a different subject. My main interest is in his writings on Math and Science, but I do plan to check out some of his religious writings, especially 'Why I'm not A Christian' and 'Can Religion Cure our Troubles?.' -
That looks like a good collection! I need to pick that up, myself. If you want a good mindfuck some night, read his (and others') writings on philo of linguistics. Between that stuff and the major works of Quine, my head wants to leak out my ears.
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Read the second book in the Takeshi Kovacs saga (broken angels). I would like some external confirmation that shit is MAD Mary Sue.
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I love linguistics, so I will definitely check those out.
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I started reading World War Z and am having trouble putting it down.
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That book was pretty good.
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So did people hear that on top of the new Discworld book "Snuff," we're also getting a Discworld TV show based on the Watch books, but with completely new content?
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I am cautiously optimistic; the live-action Hogfather was pretty weak, but Going Postal was a decent adaptation of one of my favorite books, and the same people are working on the new show.
It's just too bad Clint Eastwood is 80 years old and not British. -
JonBrescia said:
read his (and others') writings on philo of linguistics.
http://books.google.com/books?id=-xfxeSfz0O8C&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=sentences,+syntax,+and+parts+of+speech+bertrand+russell&source=bl&ots=B5-YsI8j4C&sig=4aBuZFPIdS_KD6ytvxVGtP2kz2o&hl=en&ei=D5GnTd-PBoqRgQf0zfzzBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Is this what you mean?
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That's definitely some of the right material, yeah. It's a weird and difficult path to wander down, but I think you'll enjoy it, and I'm glad it's included in that megapack you bought; remind me to purchase myself a copy, eh?
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Have you guys read any of Larry Niven's Ringworld Series?
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I've read the Ringworld novel itself, but nothing else in the series. I remember liking it quite a bit.
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There are four or five books in that series now, I think they're all quite enjoyable.
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The same. On a recent revisiting, I couldn't help but think the characters were rather flat and Niven revels in a certain 1950s mentality that the world has left behind. @Robb Do the sequels feel more modern?JonBrescia said:I've read the Ringworld novel itself, but nothing else in the series. I remember liking it quite a bit.
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Well, there are four books to the Ringworld series, with the newest released in 2004.
Since the original Ringworld was released in 1970, I think that it's dated feel is excusable. And yeah, that does go away with the newer books.
In my opinion, I don't think he really expected the first one to do very well, and wasn't totally invested in his characters. It felt like he really started to enjoy them more as the books went on.
Edit: Holy crap, was poking around on Wikipedia for the dates for the books, Larry Niven is still alive. I'm sure I heard that he died two years ago. =\ -
Just finished World War Z. It wasn't crazy awesome, but it was enjoyable. I enjoyed the style, it was like reading a really good documentary about the end of the world.
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Picked up a collection of Lovecraft stories from the bookstore today so that I can write a paper on the Dunwich Horror (which is in my top 3 favorite Lovecraft stories). Tons of his stories at around 500 pages for like $13. I love the Barnes & Noble essential reading and classics lines.
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Was it the compete collection? if so what version? there are 2 B&N versions, one of which is suppose to have 1000's of typos and errors. I heard they where suppose to correct them in the new leather bound edition, but can't confirm that they have.
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I hate when that is what you end up with: poorly edited OCRed texts that likely could have been retyped by hand faster and more accurately.
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I've always loved The Color out of Space and The Shadow out of Time, Something about both of them just creeped me out in the right way
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The Thing at the Doorstep creep me the fuck out. I think the only story to get close to that creepy for me was Stephen King's N.
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I read The Thing at the Doorstep very late, far after my bedtime, alone in the apartment. It was... difficult to sleep.
