Literary The MR Literary Club • Welcome, Information & General Discussion

[sun surfer]

Selections, Categories & Thread Links

Links are numbered at the end of each line in chronological order; the first number (1) should usually be the nomination thread while the last number should usually be the discussion thread.

2013

• June 2013, Short
  
• The American Senator by Anthony Trollope, May 2013, Time Period
  
• Chess Story by Stefan Zweig, April 2013, Obscure
  
• The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming, March 2013, Non-Fiction
  
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, February 2013, Region
  
• The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, January 2013, Poetry, 1 2 3

2012

• Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, December 2012, Open, 1 2 3 4 5
  
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, November 2012, Region, 1 2 3
  
• Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, October 2012, Plays, 1 2 3
  
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, September 2012, Contemporary, 1 2 3
  
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, August 2012, Lottery, 1 2
  
• Middlemarch by George Eliot, July 2012, Highly Challenging, 1 2 3
  
• My Old Man by Ernest Hemingway, June 2012, Short Stories
  
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, May 2012, Region
  
• The Eternal Husband by Fyodor Dostoevsky, April 2012, Obscure
  
• Turn, Magic Wheel by Dawn Powell, March 2012, Lottery
  
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, February 2012, Time Period
  
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, January 2012, Poetry

2011

• The short stories of Saki, December 2011, Open
  
• Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima, November 2011, Lottery
  
• Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, October 2011, Plays
  
• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, September 2011, Non-Fiction
  
• A Passage To India by E.M. Forster, August 2011, Lottery
  
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens, July 2011, Highly Challenging
  
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, June 2011, Open

[John F]

Does this mean the categories for the latter half of 2012 are open for discussion?

[Nyssa]

Looking at the list: I bought The Master and Margarita for June, but didn't read it (due to both lack of time, and a difficulty getting into the book), I already owned both Bleak House and A Passage to India, but did not read those either, then I just gave up. *sigh* I really will have to try to do better next year.

I've download A Christmas Carol of the MR Book Club and Beasts and Super Beasts for this book club (should it win).

[Hamlet53]

Originally Posted by John F

Does this mean the categories for the latter half of 2012 are open for discussion?

I don't think that was implied, but if this is to be discussed let's do it now and get it over with. No more arguments and polls in 2012.

[John F]

If the second half of the year is fixed, could the first post be edited to show it?

For some reason the list looks different then what I recall seeing elsewhere. I thought there were *a lot* more lottery months.

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I don't think that was implied, but if this is to be discussed let's do it now and get it over with. No more arguments and polls in 2012.

Good luck with that.

The only thing I would like to see discussion on is some effort to pick works which are widely available as ebooks.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by John F

Does this mean the categories for the latter half of 2012 are open for discussion?

Here's what I wrote in the "Begins" thread in response to some people asking about changes:

it's a possibility to change or move around the categories some, but I'm inclined to wait until all the categories originally chosen will have had their chance before a change (so around next July).

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I don't think that was implied, but if this is to be discussed let's do it now and get it over with. No more arguments and polls in 2012.

I was thinking that maybe we could have a July-June timeline as our "year".

I think of the arguments and polls happening in the other book club as separate from us.

[Hamlet53]

Originally Posted by John F

- snip -
The only thing I would like to see discussion on is some effort to pick works which are widely available as ebooks.

Sun surfer, perhaps we should have a discussion about this. I am not sure what the "some effort" would imply, if is not to pick books not available as an ebook. I know that this is a requirement for the other book club, maybe it would do to implement it here if not being available as an ebook is discouraging people from nominating books, voting for books in the polls, or reading the books and participating in the discussion?

I am not in favor of the idea because it creates a "doughnut hole" of books that are too recent to be in the public domain (and hence available from places like PG) yet not so recent and/or well known that the books have been released in ebook format. Going to only ebooks I suspect would have a related effect of making books not originally written in English even less available as one must also deal with the copyright on the translation. I see this especially applying to books written in non-Western European languages.

On the other hand if it is much of a barrier to participation to not be available in ebook that's worse.

[JSWolf]

I have to agree that allowing non-eBooks is an impediment to some people reading the winner if it isn't an eBook.

[Nyssa]

I have 3 major concerns when it comes to either book club: Price, Availability & Time or Can I get it?; Can I afford to get it?; and How long will it take me to either afford it or get it, and then read it.
I will always make more effort to get any ebook than I will a paper book, because that option always saves me time, and more often than not, money, as well.

[fantasyfan]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

I have 3 major concerns when it comes to either book club: Price, Availability & Time or Can I get it?; Can I afford to get it?; and How long will it take me to either afford it or get it, and then read it.
I will always make more effort to get any ebook than I will a paper book, because that option always saves me time, and more often than not, money, as well.

I agree.

[sun surfer]

As all of you may notice, the thread title has changed. This used to be the thread to keep track of categories and selections; now it's being expanded into the catch-all thread for our club. We'll use this thread as a welcome thread, an information thread and a general discussion thread all in one. It won't happen all at once, but during 2013, I hope to update the first post to include more relevant information and links.

If you're new to the club and have any questions or want to introduce yourself, you can post here (or just jump right into whichever other thread interests you). If anyone has questions, suggestions or anything else they'd like to discuss about the Literary Club or literature itself, post it here!

And to start things off with a little bang, I was thinking of a small change for 2013. Most changes, if any, would come during our yearly anniversary in the summer, but this is a small one that I think would be well to go ahead and start now.

Instead of aiming for five fully nominated works every month, we could instead simply aim for three full days of nominations.

It's not a big deal either way, but the reason being that we've had months where we don't reach five fully nominated works, which is fine, but it seems like because of this it'd be better if we didn't worry about trying to reach a specific number of nominees.

[desertblues]

I have some questions for which I searched in the bookclub, but couldn't find:
- are there restrictions on choices for the literary bookclub, save for the genre?
- what genre is next month?
- to see whether a book has already been read: it is enough to search for the name of a book on the forum, or are the books listed somewhere?

Thank you in advance....

[Billi]

desertblues, some of your questions - next categories, books already read - are answered in the first post of this thread.

[desertblues]

thank you Billi.
I thought there were some more books previous, but the literary bookclub exists from 2011 I see now.

[sun surfer]

As Billi said, next month's genre and previous selections are in the first post of this thread (and yep, we started not that long ago really, mid-2011). I can see how it could be easily missed at the present though because I'm in the (slow) process of updating and reformatting the post, so it's a bit messy right now. I should have it all sorted out by say mid-year at the latest.

About restrictions for the Lit Club, the main criteria is that it just be literary and fit the monthly category, and that's about it. For the most part it's left up to the nomination/voting process to weed out any nominations that might not fit well, but sometimes (rarely) I might step in if something definitely doesn't fit.

Hope that helps!