SA Book & Challenge Lovers discussion

Ankit's recent comments over in the PG Wodehouse thread (Author of the Month for October) got Lu and I talking about encouraging participation in the monthly group reads, namely the Books of the Month (themed and new release) and the Author of the Month.

We decided to try implementing Discussion Hosts to guide challenges. Very simply, the Host can be anyone who commits to:
1. reading the BoM or a book by the AoM at the beginning of the month
2. starting the discussion by posting comments. Nothing fancy, just your thoughts as you read, and a few simple questions for readers to think and talk about. Anything else you want to do - like post some trivia, links, make a reading schedule etc. is up to you

There won't be any major changes to the nomination and voting process. When you nominate an author or book, just state whether you're willing to act as Host for the discussion too. You may also offer to be Host for someone else's nomination.

For voting, hosted discussions will be marked out in the list, eg.
- The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (hosted)
- Parasite by Mira Grant
- Equations of Life by Simon Morden (hosted)
- The Never List by Koethi Zan

You don't have to offer to host in order to nominate a book or author. If you can though, then please do. It's nothing complicated, you're simply a guaranteed participant who gets the ball rolling. The challenges will carry on as usual if no one offers to host or if the chosen book/author does not have a Host.

We know that life can get in the way of our plans though, so you'll need to inform the group somehow if you can no longer host or if you'll only be able to read the book later in the month.

So what do you guys think? Do you think this system will work for you? How do you feel about hosting a discussion? Are you more likely to take participate in a group read if it's going to be hosted and there'll definitely be someone to chat to in the thread? And if you have any suggestions, please let us know!

Was just thinking that if the Host hasn't already read the BoM, then it would be nice if they commented as they were reading, instead of just commenting once they'd finished.

Yea it would be nice to comment as they go along :)

For October's reads, I nominated both and would be the host for both if we everyone is happy with this new system :nod:

Sounds like a great idea to me. I would definitely be willing to host some.

Yay :)

Sounds like a fun idea! I would be willing to take part too :)

You guys missed out the most important detail. Who brings the snacks?

This does sounds like a better way to go about things.

This might not be very practical but what do you think about maybe also do a little chatting about a book like we do with the movies. Decide to get together on a Saturday/Sunday afternoon/evening and just chat about the book, etc. (and bring the snacks!)

Members will have the opportunity to donate snacks to send to our member who is stuck in Ethiopia.

I like salted caramel fudge, btw.

Chrizette wrote: "This might not be very practical but what do you think about maybe also do a little chatting about a book like we do with the movies. Decide to get together on a Saturday/Sunday afternoon/evening ..."

A 'live' discussion, I like that!

Lauren wrote: "Chrizette wrote: "This might not be very practical but what do you think about maybe also do a little chatting about a book like we do with the movies. Decide to get together on a Saturday/Sunday ..."

Awesome let's put that as an option and the Host can do that if they want :)

Lauren wrote: "Members will have the opportunity to donate snacks to send to our member who is stuck in Ethiopia.

I like salted caramel fudge, btw."

lololol

Ok cool I like the idea
So am I right in thinking that even if the book is only now a BOM but you've read it before (even a couple of years ago) you can still host?

Yea that should be fine Niecole, as long as you still remember and sufficiently participate :)

I would suggest though, that if you read the book quite a while ago and don't plan to re-read it, that you mention that and allow someone else to host if that person is planning to read it during the challenge month.

On a similar note, if you studied the book at university, or if your studies/work/interests somehow relates to the book (eg. you studied the historical period it's set in, you're an archaeologist and the book is about archaeology, you've read a lot about a related topic), you should mention that in your offer to host.

I like the idea. I did some stats a while ago (which I deleted yesterday!) that we have on average 3 persons reading a BOM. Some books spike to about 7 persons, but it is very seldom more than 3 persons. Hopefully this will get a bit more of a discussion going. I like the idea of live discussions (with snacks!). We should probably check who is where to find locations that can work.

I'm happy to host the October author of the month - I've read loads of PG Wodehouse and will pull one of the shelf for this month.

Oh no, why did you delete the stats! Would have liked to see that.

Although the 3-reader thing is already quite interesting. And sad :( I also notice a lot of books getting no discussion at all, like our current BoMs. I always wonder how they won in the voting. Do many people just vote for the book they like most on the list, even if they have no intention of reading it?

I think Chrizette meant online get-togethers, like we have for the movie watch-alongs. We arrange to all be online at a certain time to chat. At least that's how I read it?

I asked Ankit if he'd be the Wodehouse host, since he nominated the author and sparked this whole thing, but you're welcome to host if he doesn't want to. Either way there should be about three of you in the discussion so far (another member also showed interest).

I plan on jumping in on The Cuckoo's Calling soon. Reading it atm :)

There were two things that stood out in the stats: The BOM had a slightly higher average number of readers compared to the New Release. There were some months with a high number of readers in either category and those were for either highly anticipated or highly recommended books - examples were Gone Girl, Etiquette and Espionage and The Casual Vacancy.

I think the one problem with the New Release might be that although people want to read it, not many may have it available when we actually read it. We may want to rejig the criteria a bit for that category.

We may also want to look at expanding a bit in the genres which we nominate. I know I use the BOM more for recommendations for future reads than actually participating in the month reads. (I am reading Gone Girl at moment and has The Shining Girls in a pile for next month!)

One of the other groups to which I belong actually have a kind of challenge thread where people can catch up with previous BOMs and comment in that thread.

We do seem to have very few people currently nominating books. So one option would be to return to one BOM or maybe to have two run concurrently over a slightly longer period - 2 months per book although one is new each month.

I really like the idea of them running for 2 months, and have new ones each month. Cause sometimes I just run out of time, but the next month I can read it.

Maybe we can extend the new release time to 6 months?

One thing to keep in mind with the new releases is that the books generally take another month to reach SA after their initial release. Also these tend to be pretty expensive buys unless you really wanted to read the book.

Sorry, one thing that I should have added on the stats is that those books that spiked had 7 - 10 people reading them.

Why not use the same format as we use in the movie watch along thingie? Someone chooses a month and a book and we participate. They might have a little poll to give people a choice and the poll should have books from different genres. Like for example I volunteer to host December and I nominate Emma by Jane Austen, My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent and The Third Kingdom by Terry Pratchett. I then make a little poll in November where people can vote for say 2 weeks and we read the book in December where I host the discussion.

Like the idea, or we could focus more on buddy reads which people seem to enjoy as well.

I agree with Crusader about the cost aspect of new releases. I wouldn't have bought The Shining Girls at this stage if I didn't need it to complete a challenge.

It is not just the cost but also the edition I want. Which is the reason I have participated in BOM but not the new release version.

The New Release challenge is easiest for NetGalley users because we get the books early and for free, and a lot of the nominations are for books available on NetGalley. I don't think extending this one to two months is going to help much, because the books aren't going to get any cheaper for anyone else during that time. Six months is a tad long - the first readers may have lost interest in the discussion by then, or readers will read it too far apart to chat much. Maybe if we moved that to Book Discussions/Buddy Reads? We could have an additional thread there to set up NetGalley read-alongs for those who use the site and those who are willing to pay for new releases.

We could still have two BoMs running for two months each, but staggered. Ie. The Lies of Locke Lamora starts in October and runs until end November. Red Seas Under Red Skies starts in November and runs until end December. That way we still have monthly nominations because there will still be a new BoM each month.

@Carolien: One of the other groups to which I belong actually have a kind of challenge thread where people can catch up with previous BOMs and comment in that thread.
That Bookclub Monthlies challenge might win at the voting. Perhaps we can adjust the rules to allow people to read the BoM after the relevant month. The BoM threads remain open so discussion can always continue.

@Barbara: For me this would be difficult in terms of planning. I will happily agree to host a discussion next month because I know what I plan to read, but I'm cautious about looking too far ahead because plans change, I don't know what my reading schedule will be like, etc. For example, there are some months where I only read review copies, and since they're almost always new, I'd basically be running another New Release BoM and probably won't get many participants.

Lauren wrote: "Oh no, why did you delete the stats! Would have liked to see that.

Although the 3-reader thing is already quite interesting. And sad :( I also notice a lot of books getting no discussion at all, l..."

I had not mind Carolien hosting the "Author of the Month". I know her from before, she's on my GR friends list as well. Moreover the fact that she has read more Wodehouse books than myself, would make her a better host. And I have never hosted any Group Reads or such, so this time it would be better if I just follow Lu and Carolien and then I will host some other challenge.

Meanwhile I will be available discussing the "Author of the Month".

I very much like the idea of online get-together chating at the same time.

I don't think so that the "New Release Book of the Month" is that good a challenge and even not much interesting. There are several reasons for that the main being the availability of the book and also that most readers tend to wait for other reviewers and then decide whether or not to read it. Instead of this challenge we can have a "Decade Reading Challenge", where in we decide or vote upon a particular decade and read a book from that time. Or maybe a "Country Read", where in we decide a particular country (usually not UK or US), and read a book which is set in that country or written by a author from that country or a book that talks about that particular country's history. This challenge could be the best as it would vary our reading as well.

I'm happy with the new release being taken away. This is mostly the one I read because of Netgalley, but I will take it to buddy reads :nod:

We can do a poll vote if we should keep a second bom? Maybe we have an open one, where we don't have a theme at all, anything goes, or other themes.

I'll make a new thread under book discussions. Would be a nice thing to have for new releases either way.

I think it'll be nice to have two running for two months each. Otherwise, it's a long wait for the next read if the current one doesn't interest you. Although, admittedly, most of the BoMs don't interest me anyway, so having more of them doesn't necessarily help.
Don't mind if they're themed or open-ended. Open might be simpler since there haven't been many theme nominations lately and we seem to running out of ideas.

I'm up for one themed and one open running for 2 months each. Show of hands?

I'm happy with that.

I would enjoy the NetGalley reading-buddy idea. I always want to try new books from NetGalley but in the end I don't request them as I am worried I will not get to it. With a buddy-read, there will be an incentive to read them!

I have the opposite problem - I really need to cut down on my NetGalley requests! My backlist is very long...
Anyway, the thread is up so you can check it out :)

I've been thinking about Ankit's comment on varying the nominations and I agree with him that our BOM nominations tends to be very genre specific (maybe most of us just lack imagination?!!)

It may be an idea to create either 3 or 4 meta themes that we rotate to guide the overall nominations for a month. Three that comes to mind is:
Geography
Genre
Time period (or era)
There may be something else - popular culture?

So 4 times a year the nominations should be related to geography - could be read a book set in France, read a book translated from French, read a book set mainly on the ocean, read a book in which transport plays a major role, read a book set in a fictional world, etc
4 times we'll focus on genre
4 times on an era - read a book set or written during the Great Depression, read a book about Vikings can be either era or geography, read a book published prior to WW11, etc

This may be just a bit of a stimulus to get us to thinking slightly broader about nominations each month. We may or not repeat the theme on the author side (or we can run them sequentially - so if the BOM month is geography, the author one is time period, etc)

I know that just by writing this structure, I've had more ideas for BOM than I had ever been able to come up with previously!

I think we tend to be stuck in our ways :) If you wanted me to read a book set in the Great Depression the first thing I'd do is look for a fantasy or sci fi take or see if there's something in my review pile :)

The rotation could certainly shake things up a bit, and maybe bring some of our silent members out in the open.

@Carolien,
Some interesting points there. But my overall vote goes for Geography. Not only would it not pack us into a selective genre but also vary our reading by different means. This challenge should be for 2 months as mentioned above.
e.g. Starting in November and ending in December, starting in December and ending in January.
We could read 12 books from 12 different nations which would be very interesting.


Alongside have another BOM which is open totally.

I am not much up with the genre thing. Our tastes differ and most readers would only prefer scifi or dystopia kind. The era could be good but it shouldn't necessarily cover any historical background like WW2 or 1 or Great Depression or anything like that.

@Lu
Era was probably not the best term to use and my examples were pretty extreme - blame it on the fact that the bookshelves I could see this morning and provided inspiration was either full of cricket/baseball books or history/science. (They would definitely not win the poll for the BOM in any case, so you were probably safe!)

I was aiming more at a time defined nomination which could cover anything from:
specific events as per above;
seasons or seasonal books - read a book with a Christmas/Easter kind of theme, a book about winter etc
time - Ankit's example of a book about a decade, or set in the future, alternate history etc

Quick check that we are on the same page here (apt metaphor for a book site). These meta themes would serve as the guideline for the nominations of the theme for the next month. So in October you would do the normal nominate a theme for a book in December and then add that the theme should be linked to geography with examples if you want to. We then go through the normal process of various themes being nominated and once a specific one has been voted as favourite, that would be the trigger for the nominations for BOM of December and January.

Practical example from above: In October people nominate book about Iceland, book translated from Italian, book set in the ocean. You then put up a poll and the winner is Book translated from Italian. So in November you get nominations for The Whisperer, Dante's Inferno and A Florentine Death. Goes to a poll and The Whisperer wins which is then BOM for December and January. In the meantime we have repeated the process in November, but the meta theme was Time related. So you got five time related nominations (as per example above), we vote in November and a book set in the future wins the poll. So in December we nominate books set in the future, vote for one and that becomes BOM for Jan and Feb.

I agree with you about genre, but for some reason about 80% of the theme nominations are for a genre. Happy to drop it and play with any other meta themes. We get quite creative when we nominate tasks for Mishmash etc and I would like to capture some of those ideas in a meta theme. A meta theme on Books may work - which would capture the stuff about items on the cover, length of title, authors, etc. Have a look at the kind of tasks we nominate and let's throw some ideas around.

If you guys want to have meta themes, I suggest 12 of them. There have been enough suggestions and we can think of more for 12.

I am just worried about the administration. It needs to be very clear and very easy to explain to new users. The whole BoM stuff will have to be put into a new thread and the dates etc. worked out. I have no problem doing this, we just need to be very clear in what we want and what we end up doing.

I don't care about themes or stuff, my 1 thing is that we have 2 BoM's. That is very important to me.

Why not make the one BOM theme based as discussed and the other one "Challenge based"? it works exactly s the new releases at the moment, so in November we nominate and vote for a December book, but we ask that when people nominate a book, they should state which task for which challenge that we currently have running the book would fit. We normally have 3-5 challenges at any given moment so there is no lack of inspiration. The nice thing would be that people can nominate some books for some of the more obscure/difficult tasks. So in October people can nominate books which will fit in The Africa Challenge, In memoriam and Jane Austen challenge (and for that matter the A-Z challenges). The tasks would then provide the inspiration for the nominations for that book?

BTW since we seem to be doing some seasonally appropriate spring cleaning, do we want to experiment with Author of the month as well?

The problem with the challenge based one, is that some people don't do challenges and just want to read for fun.

I'll make a list of all the ideas, sometime today, so we can see where we are.

Some consolidation is a good idea!

Ok this was hard. I THINK I have it all. If someone sees anything missing, tell me quickly and I will change it. But this is what I have. Please vote:

I think it would be easier to see who is in for what. I'll number these things to make it easier. Some are questions, and some are what I think everyone has decided on.

1. Happy with hosts for the bom and aom?
2. If a host decides on a get together to discuss a book on a day/time etc. would you be interested? So 'live' discussions (Just so we know).
3. We are taking away the new release and instead moving this to Netgalley discussion where people can ask for buddy reads.
4. There will still be 2 bom's
5. Both Bom's will run for 2 months at a time, to give people more time. However, every month 2 new ones will be chosen, so we have in effect 4 at the same time.
6. Are you happy with author of the month as is (added with hosts now)?

7. Now the real question. For the Bom's should we:

A) keep one open ended (you can nominate anything) and the other nominate our random themes like we have been doing?

B) have meta themes such as Carolien suggested that are decided on and set (there will still be nominations for themes, but they have to be set in the meta themes) and the other read open ended? If you like this, we need to know:

- 3 or 4 meta themes that rotate?
- 12, 1 for each month?
- Have it based on Geography such as Ankit suggests?

C) keep one open ended (you can nominate anything) and the other one should be Challenge based as Carolien suggests.

PS: Lets get this done so we can implement it. If it takes a few days, that is ok, I can postpone nominations a bit.

1. Yes
2. Possibly.
3. No problem with that.
4. OK
5. Good idea.
6. Yes.
7. I'd go for Option A. I'm not a fan of having set themes (meta themes?). It might add needless complexity. We already have tons of challenges, so something more 'free range' would be good.

1. Yes
2. I'm keen, if I'm available at the chosen time.
3. Works for me
4. OK
5. It probably will not affect me too much as I read so quickly, but I have no objection to the idea,
6. Yes.
7. Option C is my first choice, followed by Option A. Option B seems a bit complicated for something simple.

1-6. Happy and good with it all.

7. I like option A, and I think we mention the meta themes suggested here in the nomination thread for themes, to help with ideas. If we do B, I prefer 12 themes.

1. Yes
2. Yes, I think leave it up to the host of the month to propose some times and those who are actually participating can make the choice at the time.
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes.
7. I'm happy as proposed by yourself Lu, C will also work for me.(In good old corporate speak - run a pilot for 3 months with a version, we can review it in January and tweak it if necessary).

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes, have made a new thread.
4. Yes.
5. I thought it would be one per month (so always two running at the same time, like we have now) but 4 is also fine with me.
6. Yes.
7. I like C. A is fine too, but I find B quite complicated. The one advantage to B however, is that it's more likely to give us some variety and encourage members with different tastes to participate. On the other hand, those members could also make a difference by nominating and voting, and we have no guarantee that they'll participate if we try to accommodate them ourselves, so I don't feel too bad about it.

Yes for first six questions

B Geography for the seventh one.

K so 3 A's (if I counted you right Carolien?)
2 C's
1 B

I think Varla, Chriz and Niecole still need to vote. I will message them :)

Varla voted in message 43.

Sigh and I counted her vote. Not all there :(
I found out I have to rewrite so much of my thesis and it has to be in on the 14th :( Crying inside!