OK. link?
This one right here:
Though it’s still a procedural discussion about how we’re gonna approach the reading/discussion schedule. It is not yet a discussion of the book itself. That will most likely warrant a new thread once we get going.
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Dear god, it looks like Christian Kane can’t decide if he’s Spike or 18th century Angel there 
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Can’t he be both?
Yes, this thread is full of wonderful jokes but ceased to forward the effort.
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Suggestion for our next book?
Sounds like it’d have wangs in it, so @othermichael will be happy.
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Well, this seems interesting:
I would like to throw this in for consideration.
Seems to be relevant to some of our discussions about the forces from the 30s and 40s that continue to shape current American discourse.
Plus, I want to see @Mindysan33 and @FoolishOwl dialogue over this.
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As we’re on a non-fiction choice, I’m going to offer
for no other reason than I want to read it and food’s a subject I have an interest in.
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I heard a presentation Kruse gave a couple of years ago on the earlier version of this topic, and after listening to the interview on Fresh Air last night, it was interesting to see how it evolved.
And one of my colleagues was reading an interesting book today about the history of conservative thought, and I can’t remember what it was called now.
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The Fresh Air interview made me think of how this served as part of the cultural backdrop to the Cold War. Interesting to think that America’s Barons, failing to discredit The New Deal on rhetorical grounds, decided to switch the playing field to whether those civic policies are sinful by nature.
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Banks didn’t kill this?
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I don’t think so. I thought the discussion was great, even if the book wasn’t all that.
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Banks tried, but the commenterait kept hope alive.
The Quarry was a well and crappy book by my measure. But the heartfelt discussion was priceless. People shared about their experiences with autism, anxiety, cancer, compulsions, addictions, sex, crushes, abuse, caregiving, and the damp despair endemic to the England countryside. And, for me, it seemed respectful, we never had a troll show up, and we didn’t need any time-outs that weren’t self-imposed.
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Cool. Here is to picking a better book! I fizzled out. Had I read it in one sitting, I’d have finished it – but chapter by chapter I could not stay engaged.
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A good portion of the group read at their own pace. Some finished it quicker, some were a chapter behind on any given week.
I tried chapter-by-chapter, but it was Chapter 4 or 5 that made me want to rip off the band aid and finish it.
As all of our reading rates vary, and our time to dedicate to this endeavor fluctuates day by day, we might benefit from a more asynchronous model. Say, for the next book, start discussion threads for each chapter, and then it’s on the reader to not go into threads for the next chapter unless they don’t mind spoilers.
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I’d think reading a non-fiction book week by week might be a bit easier to hold onto, especially if we go with a book of essays…
Depends on the subject, I think. Fiction has a broader appeal and scope, even when it’s bad fiction. But a subject that holds little interest to you is going to be a real slog from the word go.
I mean, I can’t imagine there are many people that would place “The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football” at the top of their list other than me. Limited appeal and all that…
Actually, for me at least, I’m more interested in what a history has to say about a broader context, so I’d read a history of a topic I have no real interested in, such as sports.
We had talked about switching between fiction and non-fiction for this… at least that’s what I recall we did.
Either way, I’m just happy to participate, even if we all decide we dislike the book at the end of it.
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