Quote:
Originally Posted by sun surfer
Would you, though, read something for this club that you wouldn't have read anyway? I think I have a few times over the years for this club, but nowadays if I don't like the selection then I skip it (unlike the lit club, where I often read books I wouldn't have otherwise).
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Well, I wasn't going to pursue this, but.... I've read a lot of books I wasn't interested in during my involvement with the club. My feeling was that if I wanted people to read books I nominated, then I owed them the courtesy of reading their nominations if they won. But I got frustrated; it seemed to me I read several books of really no interest to me when even the nominators couldn't be bothered. So last year I decided to stop nominating books so then I wouldn't feel obligated; I only read if I feel like it.
That's hardly the response we want to engender. I used to put a lot of effort into nominations and I really valued the process. I'm not saying people should read something they know they'd loathe (I wouldn't), but I think if this is to be a club, more people should try things outside their comfort zone. That's why I'd like people to feel more invested in the selection and voting and then, ideally, they'd feel more invested in the outcome. Frankly, I think moral suasion is the only way to achieve this and I don't know how successful it would be.
In a real-life book club, there's the pizza and beer as an incentive. I can't come up with the virtual equivalent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes
I want the book club to be fiction and not non-fiction. Some may want more non-fiction than fiction. Which is where Issybird's point about subgroups and categories makes a lot of sense. I might go with four votes per person, but that's a statistical argument based on an assumption of sample size and what I think I know about the group (all of which could be wrong.)
<snip>
Who here wants to read about information and classification, urban planning, music, math, and human-computer interaction?
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I love non-fiction and read a lot of it, but I think it's less club-friendly. I'd still like to see more than one month, but that's not a critical issue for me. Four votes would be fine with me, too - just the sense that every vested interest or subgroup would give a little, get a little. No one should feel they could or should influence all the category choices.
As for urban planning, I've got Robert Caro's massive biography of Robert Moses queued up for the summer, when I'll have more time than I do now.