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Originally Posted by poohbear_nc
What about throwing out titles/authors that you've never read, and think you would/should like to read? I tend to re-read personal favorites and see how they age with me. It would be interesting to encounter fresh reads that I've missed or skipped.
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Rereading/not rereading is quite personal, of course, and with me it’s mostly that I’d rather not reread something I know thoroughly or read fairly recently. Basically though your suggestion is what appeals to me; people come up with a list of suggestions and see if a consensus can be reached, taking into account each others’ strong preferences and aversions. Personally, I’d like to avoid formal polling this go-round; this is also in reference to
Catlady’s post below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
Just thinking out loud. The lists are useful for refreshing one's memory, I think, plus the synopses they provide are helpful. So start there, add other suggestions. The main thing I'd like is to decide all the choices initially, not bother with repeated monthly polls and the requirement to read a book because you voted in a monthly poll.
So if Pride and Prejudice was one of the monthly choices, and you didn't want to read it again (or ever), fine; no guilt.
After the initial setup and choices, I would hope for a fluid group, with participants coming and going based on the monthly choice and their level of interest. I think this is feasible for a classics-oriented book club; I wouldn't necessarily want to reread a familiar classic, but I might still be interested in joining a discussion.
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Yes to a fluid group and no commitment. But still a monthly choice? Monthly seems too frequent to me for classics, at least of the 19th century doorstopper variety. But if we went with quarterly, it’s all the more reason to avoid as best we could selections that don’t achieve a broad consensus. And with only four books a year, I would hope that it wouldn’t be all that hard to take everyone’s preferences into account. It would be a pity to have to miss a choice out of sheer loathing, if we were to have only four selections in a year, but I really this presupposes a level of reasonableness, say? This probably wouldn’t be the club for someone who loathes moldy oldies who’d be vetoing choices right and left. Can we count on self-selection?
BTW, I like the criterion of public domain everywhere. There might be other criteria, also, but public domain covers both age and price.