It'll be fun - after we finish a three book cycle, we'll spin a large virtual wheel and somebody gets to be The Boss Of Us that month (at least as far as reading matter).

"Bwahahahhaha! You'll all read Ethan Frome and you'll LIKE IT!"

Okay, it goes without saying MM is right out.

Very cool idea!! Also, I love the suggestion upthread of pairing up books. A suggestion for two relatively recent selections, one fiction and one non-fiction (the non-fiction author got the idea of the book from reading the fiction one)--The Alienist by Caleb Carr and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. The first is a wonderfully creepy serial killer book set in 1890s NYC, with real people fictionalized and intermingling with the original characters. The second has parallel storylines, one dealing with Daniel Burnham, architect and organizer of the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, and the other with a serial killer who actually did transform his hotel on the outskirts of the fair into a death factory, where he killed an unknown number of women.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

I love this pairing. I've been wanting to read The Alienist again, and a friend just finished The Devil in the White City and said it was fascinating.

Maybe pairings should be stretched over two months, though? I'm usually a fast reader, but with a baby under eight months, not so much at the moment. And I hate the idea of skimming to keep up.

Hopefully everything we come up with will be available at the library, because my book buying budget is pretty nill.

And the anarchist in my head wants me to rec "Roget's Pocket Thesaurus." Yes, the reference book. Could be worse, the anarchist could be looking up the recipes for nitroglycerin.

Some other non-novel suggestions--a Bill Bryson book, perhaps A Walk in the Woods? A collection of essays/columns, perhaps by Mike Royko or Molly Ivins? A biography/memoir or two?

Just tossing out ideas.

OK. I think I'm going to at least try this book club thing and see how it goes.

I'd hoped to offer a romance or two for my suggestions, but all the ones I wanted to recommend are out of print. So, instead I'm going to recommend some romance-ish books:

Jaran, by Kate Elliott. Described by the author as "Jane Austen meets Genghis Khan on the set of Lawrence of Arabia," it's a science fiction novel that feels more like fantasy or historical fiction in many ways, since it's mostly set on a low-tech planet among nomads on horseback. And it's a romance, and a coming-of-age story about finding yourself, and your family, and escaping and failing to escape your past. And, IMO, a damn good read all around.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen. Not my favorite Austen--that's P&P. But IMO it's her richest, most mature, and most satisfying work.

I'm just throwing this out because DavidS (I think) mentioned Ford Madox Ford a while back.... but if you ever do the "unreliable narrator" theme, you should include The Good Soldier. I don't want to be impose-y Buffista X about suggesting it unless someone seconds interest (at which point I can go on and on about it with little provocation) but that theme caught my eye.

Vonnie K -- I loved House of Leaves, but it might not be a good selection because it's very much a love-it-or-hate-it book. It starts very slowly with an irritating narrator, and there's a ton of postmodern funkyness in the text (flip through it and just look at the page layouts). I think people would either devour it or throw it across the room after 20 minutes.

If we can do plays, my brother HIGHLY recommends "Arcadia" by Tom Stoppard. I'd like to do some, but we might need to do them in pairs...

Oooh, I like Strega's rec of The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. Really interesting book, craft-wise.

This thread is like being a kid in a candystore! I gots to slow down!

Not the recs, lilty, but the "rules" when we hammer out some kind of structure here. Nothing you can do right now, even if you had the time.

Wolfram, I actually meant to suggest to keep both the "rules" and the book list in the first post. I don't know that we could keep the recs there too, though. It might just get too big. (cc: Lilty) I didn't mean to nominate poor Lilty as keeper of either, though. I figured whoever collected it would just let Lilty know, and she could copy & paste.