Thanks both of you!
Sounds like a go ahead to try pretty much all of everything mentioned so far, except maybe holding off on the 'dynamic scheduling' of shorter/longer periods depending on selection length for a few months while we implement everything else here, mainly because I'm not sure I have my head wrapped around how to specifically best go about that just yet (and if anyone has any opinions on that or anything else in the next few months then feel free to post them!). Luckily with not doing things on a stricter yearly basis anymore, we can change or fine tune things as we go along and see fit.
So, the only thing left now is the inconsequential little matter of categories! Heh.
To begin we'll be looking at the next few months of July, August and September. That will be our 'summer' season (I had labelled my 2017 reading challenge 3-month chunks by seasons in the exact same way and it seemed a good way to do it) despite the southern hemisphere being closer to winter; I hope anyone from that side of the world is okay with that for simplicity's sake! (And if not we can always discuss other season name options)
I've considered whether to make a new thread for category ideas but for now I think we'll probably be okay just discussing that here in this thread since I don't foresee any long discussions on the matter. However we can always make a separate thread if needed.
One thing about any new category ideas is that I'd like them to be 'simple'. This means requiring no extra work/oversight to run those categories. Some examples of previous more complex categories that wouldn't fit 'simple' are Region and Time Period (the pre-nominations vote to decide on specifics those months) as well as Journey around the World. That doesn't mean we can't have similar categories now, only that they'd need to be in a simpler form now. For example, instead of 'Region', we might just have a category of a specific region like 'Southeast Asia' from the get-go (and any suggestions on that front can be any region/whatever the suggester prefers whether it matches one from our previous Region category or not).
Also, for now I suppose it's a good idea to set Rotating months aside as a regular addition. We still have the option of returning to them if we want sometime, and anyone *can* still suggest a rotating month for themselves if they like as a stand-alone.
Beyond that though, categories can be just about anything! Well, anything that would work for literary writings, heh. They can be more 'regular' type ones like many or our previous categories; they can be more 'theme' type ones like many of our rotating months have had over the years and like the general club is using now; they can be something else you've thought of. They can be just a suggestion of a self-explanatory category name, or they can be accompanied with a short description of what the category is about.
Having read over different member's comments here and there over the last year or so, I would hope we may go in a slightly more contemporary and even perhaps less esoteric direction moving forward. This isn't a comment on any of our recent selections but rather just our nominations and selections as a whole over the years, and the hope is to possibly open our club up slightly more. But that doesn't mean foregoing anything difficult, old or obscure, just perhaps hoping for more of a new balance between it all. I welcome any discussion on this though as it's just an observation I've had and not any mandatory direction, and personally I like all types of lit club books old or new, and I'm not even sure how closely I myself will think about this when nominating books.
Right, so you can make suggestions in two ways:
-The first would be to offer general 'suggestions' just to put them out there/discuss them/bat them around, with no specific date or implementation in mind.
-The second would be to make a more formal 'nomination' for *one* particular category for the upcoming season; you can do this by requesting it for a particular month in the season or just suggest the category and I'll slot it in. If you want to make a more formal suggestion like this, please make that clear by using the word(s) 'nominate/nomination/nominating' so I'll know.
Category nominations will more or less be on a first come/first served basis per season. You can make suggestions for any categories and any seasons at any time, but should only nominate a category for the current upcoming season (so that we don't get ahead of ourselves by filling up categories/months for later seasons which defeats the purpose of only taking things every few months at a time). Though it will generally be first come/first served all else being equal, we also encourage anyone to suggest or nominate categories if they plan on participating, and if someone new/returning or someone who hasn't nominated something as recently nominates a category then perhaps preference could be given to them, but it will be a collaborative decision if that issue comes up (there's no hard or fast guideline either way on the matter).
Because of our smaller membership I expect probably only a few of us to be regularly nominating categories for the most part, but welcome any new or returning posters to do so as often as possible so long as they plan to participate for that month.
Our Summer season (and entire soft reset of the club) is very shortly upcoming- less than two days away! As such, if there aren't any category nominations for July by then we can start with an Open month, but any other nominations for July (even if it's just to formally nominate 'Open', heh) are welcome! (And also any general Summer category nominations or specifically for August or September)
