Deena, It looks great in my browser and will really facilitate easy reading/discussion. Thanks for the effort.
The Buffista Book Club: the Harry Potter iteration
This thread is a focused discussion group. Please see the first post below for the current topic and upcoming book discussions. While natter will inevitably happen, we encourage you to treat this like a virtual book club and try to keep your posts in that spirit.
By consensus, this thread is reopened specifically to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It will be closed again once that discussion has run its course.
***SPOILER ALERT***
I'm glad you all like it.
I'm not sure of the exact length, but it was only 15 relatively short chapters, so it shouldn't take long to read. (I kept finding mistakes in the code where I started reading and forgot what I was doing.)
I have read it before but it's still a great read. I was a real Sherlock Holmes groupie when I was a kid.
I think I'll be a snob and read HotB from my Baring-Gould two-volume annotated Holmes. God, I love those books, early fandom gone mad.
I'm looking forward to reading Sherlock Holmes in English. I don't think I've read any of the stories in anything but Hebrew before.
Oh, and I'm (again) with AmyLiz (hi back!) with agreeing with Wolfram. I couldn't participate in discussions before, but it seems like enough time even for me to read the whole of the text in English.
Thanks for all the reassurances. Please keep the question in mind, however, and do let me know if the situation changes.
Everything sounds good to me, and the text looks great in my IE at work, Deena. Thanks for putting it up! Wolfram, didn't you do the notices before? Do you want to put a notice announcing that HP discussion will be coming to an end and the next book, link and dates? Perhaps you could include a discussion guide or (in whatever form) from Ginger.
Lilty, are you reading here?
I've now realized that the new annotated Holmes won't include the novels until this fall. (I'm reading through my two volumes slowly, because it's like reading the phone book. My arms get tired.) Still, I think I can put together a Holmes timeline, links to criticism and some discussion questions.
One thing that occurred to me is that, particularly since this is a short novel that's available online, we could have something more like a read-and-post, i.e., we could schedule chapters x-xx for a week, rather than the whole book at one time. What do y'all think?
Do you want to put a notice announcing that HP discussion will be coming to an end and the next book, link and dates? Perhaps you could include a discussion guide or (in whatever form) from Ginger.
I was going to wait until Friday to give folks time to weigh in on both the selection and the closing of HP discussion.
One thing that occurred to me is that, particularly since this is a short novel that's available online, we could have something more like a read-and-post, i.e., we could schedule chapters x-xx for a week, rather than the whole book at one time. What do y'all think?
I love this idea. Cindy had suggested something similar several months ago, and considering the convenient formatting that Deena did, and the length of the novel, it just might work.
Concerns I'd raise are: a) how would we limit discussion by chapter for people who've read the book previously or couldn't stop themselves from reading past the cutoff (like me); b) how would we chop up the chapters so there'd be enough to discuss; c) how long should each discussion period be; and d) would we then have an overall discussion period of the entire book.
I've now realized that the new annotated Holmes won't include the novels until this fall.
See, my first image from this was that the minders had just started tattooing Katie's interview lines directly on her skin.
I was going to wait until Friday to give folks time to weigh in on both the selection and the closing of HP discussion.
Great!
One thing that occurred to me is that, particularly since this is a short novel that's available online, we could have something more like a read-and-post, i.e., we could schedule chapters x-xx for a week, rather than the whole book at one time. What do y'all think?
I like this idea too.
Concerns I'd raise are: a) how would we limit discussion by chapter for people who've read the book previously or couldn't stop themselves from reading past the cutoff (like me); b) how would we chop up the chapters so there'd be enough to discuss; c) how long should each discussion period be; and d) would we then have an overall discussion period of the entire book.
Perhaps Ginger, as our fearless leader for this discussion, could determine breaking points and time periods for discussion. If we had superbrief synopses for each section, we could work really hard to limit discussion to that section (perhaps with more flexibility regarding what came earlier), even if we read ahead (not that I would ever do anything like that!). I like the idea of having a whole book discussion at the end, perhaps with some thought-provoking questions to keep the discussion going.
Read-n-post works for me, though it might cause problems for those who'd already read the book (like I've read HotB).