ooooooh. that’s out, then, for me.
Another book I’ve leafed through that looked interesting…
Do you have a recommendation for better and more current works, by any chance? (In case it doesn’t convey, this is an honest and not sarcastic question. D: )
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Hmm, I like.
In which case I would like to suggest we read something by Nietzsche.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Although I imagine some people would consider it fiction. 
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This discussion would work better in Loomio. BBSs and mailing lists do discussions that need a consensus rather badly …
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So, I went ahead and made a list of all the suggestions, divided into fiction and non-fiction. This huge list obviously needs to be cut down. I think we should start by withdrawing the suggestions (that we ourselves made) we feel are not too important or serious. Or if there is a book that feels like an impossible suggestion (too new to be found in a library, hard to find at all, way too long for this group etc.), we’ll leave that out unless there’s strong opposition. I don’t know how we’ll proceed with the voting. Of course, this is @anon61221983’s group, so she decides, but I’m just trying to help a little. 
FICTION
The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - Lovecraft
1984 - Orwell
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Post-Human series - David Simpson
Fluency - Jennifer Foehner Wells
Elric of Melniboné – Moorcock
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace short stories
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nigh-Time - Mark Haddon
Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis
Gravity's Rainbow
Finnegan's Wake
Going to Meet the Man - James Baldwin
Darkwater – Du Bois
A Good Man Is Hard To Find - Flannery O'Connon
Alice Munro – Selected Short Stories
Afrosf: Science Fiction by African Writers
A Scanner Darkly - Phillip K. Dick
Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond
Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delaney
Spaceman Blues: A Love Song - Brian Francis Slattery
The Quarry - Iain Banks
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Trial - Frank Kafka
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Disgrace - J. M.Coetzee
Pacific Edge - Kim Stanley Robinson
NON-FICTION
How dogs love us - Gregory Burns
King Kong Theory - Virginie Desperantes
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
The Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo
Wired For Culture - Mark Pagel
James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin - The Cross of Redemption
Peter Gran - The Islamic Roots of Capitalism
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? - Lila Abu-Lughod
Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversionof the Middle East - Ussama Makdisi
What Went Wrong?, Fifth Edition: Case Histories of Process Plant Disaster and How They Could Have Been Avoided
Space Systems Failures: Disasters and Rescues of Satellites, Rocket and Space Probes
Orientalism- Said
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales - Oliver Sacks
An Anthropologist on Mars – Oliver Sacks
Information Doesn't Want to be Free - @doctorow
Discipline and Punish - Foucault
Mick Foley's autobiography "Have a Nice Day"
Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Summa Technologiae - Lem
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I checked Loomio out and it seems great for what we’re doing. I was gonna suggest Trello, but it doesn’t have voting.
I already created a test group in Loomio to see how it would work out. If everyone makes a seperate discussion for the books they’ve suggested, they can create a proposal that people can vote for. I like the fact that there are 4 different vote types you can give. You can also discuss each book (or in other words, discussion) seperately - so if you’re unsure, you can ask about the book, or tell people why you do or don’t think it’s a great idea.
Here’s the group I made, I made it public to see the discussions because I don’t know your emails in order to invite you, but you have to request to join: The Amazing BoingBoing Book Club
If people are on board with this, I can easily make @anon61221983 an admin so it doesn’t look like I’m stealing her thing here. 
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That was quick work, I’m in.
I’ll admit to being a big Loomio fan. It’s a New Zealand based project and I’ve been following them since the Kickstarter.
It seems to be great for collaboration. I hope people start joining and create their suggestions as discussions (though I can do some of that work, too, I don’t mind). And if people really give a vote to every book, even if it is a “I abstain from answering”, we can get really accurate results from this. We also need to figure out what kind of deadline we should give for voting, but that’s what the discussions are for.
I used to use Hojoki and loved it, but they shut it down, then changed it to CatchApp, then shut that down.
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Loomio is Open Source, so anyone can pick it up and run with it. The code and instructions to run your own instance are here: GitHub - loomio/loomio: Loomio is a collaborative decision making tool
Sigh. We’re the same age. Also, old.
It won’t help you with your BezosBucks (public domain), but Anthony Hope did some great against-the-grain Victorian comedies of manners. The Dolly Dialogues or Quisante. He’s known for The Prisoner of Zenda, but that was schlock.
But for real people, join this and let’s see where this takes us:
https://www.loomio.org/g/gk0cQuai/the-amazing-boingboing-book-club
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Just heard what seems to be a contemporaneous suggestion from Shane Smith, the top guy at Vice.
Blurb:
20 November 1979: as morning prayers began, hundreds of hardline Islamist gunmen, armed with rifles smuggled in coffins, stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca. With thousands of terrified worshippers trapped inside, the result was a bloody siege that lasted two weeks, caused hundreds of deaths, prompted an international diplomatic crisis and unleashed forces that would eventually lead to the rise of al Qaeda. Journalist Yaroslav Trofimov takes us day-by-day through one of the most momentous - and heavily censored - events in recent history, interviewing many direct participants in the siege and drawing on secret documents to reveal the truth about the first operation of modern global jihad.
Details how Wahhabism has managed to get so much cash for the building of Mosques around the world; the central method through which groups like ISIS are able to recruit so many new adherents to it’s cause.
French secret service supplying drugs to the conflagration, allegations of CIA involvement by the clerics who issue fatwas in order to secure funds for the promotion of Jihad.
Sounds like a hoot.
I appreciate the honest and not sarcastic question and was trying to think of a current suggestion (I’ve been out of academia for decades). I was thinking about maybe trying a different path with something like The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by Mearsheimer and Walt which is controversial (to say the least), but I like @miasm’s suggestion of The Siege of Mecca much better.
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Okay, so I’ m happy to see the buy in. I’ve sent a request to join the loomio thingie… I assume that’s in order to pick our reading?
@Raita if you’d like to be admin, I’m more than fine with that. Please feel free to do the hard labor and I’ll gladly take the credit and glory! 
I’m glad to see this becoming a thing and it being driven by community, and not just me.
If we can do the voting over the long weekend, and maybe make a final decision Monday or Tuesday on the reading, we can all start the process of reading. As soon as we pick a book from the loomio thingie, I’ll set up a new thread here.
Does that make sense, all?
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Alright, I’ll gladly manage the Loomio community! I can still make you an admin so you can approve people’s memberships, because we probably live in different time zones and can’t be here all thetime.
I approved your membership; now you (and everyone else) should enter their suggestions as discussions in Loomio.
I don’t think we should start voting yet, because it’ll probably take a few days till all the people who are interested have joined the Loomio community and entered their suggestions.
But yeah, we’ll look at the results once we get them and then make a decision based on that. We could pick maybe the most 3-5 popular books and read them in some order (for example, first a fiction book, then in the next quarter the most popular non-fiction book, etc.). Or we can just pick one book, read it and discuss it here, and then in the next quarter, vote again on the same books (and maybe some new suggestions).
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Having trouble with that Loomiing thing working. 
I’m gonna drop out at this point as it’s been switched to there.
What’s your trouble? I don’t want you to drop out because of a thing like that!
It’s sulking. Or just refusing to play with some combination of browser and flash/ad/javascript blocker. Could be an html 5 thingy as Vine fails on me, too.
Is it just the voting that’s going on there, cause I’m happy just to go with whatever’s decided.
LOL. You drastically over-estimate my potential contributions. 
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