Regarding kerfluffles -- I wasn't in on any in Literary, because I don't hang out there. I love the idea of a book club and had even been thinking about floating the idea. Main reason? Having some common material to discuss again on a regular basis other than (much as I enjoy it) SG in Boxed Set. Kerfluffleage enters not into it for me.

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More and more, I think a separate thread is the way to go. I think it could get to be frustrating for both participants and non-participants in the Book Club to sift through posts in Literary.

It's one thing to skim a thread to see if anything is of interest ... hit or miss, no harm, no foul. For example, skimming Boxed Set to see if there's any Farscape discussion happening when you've got some free time to check it out. It's another thing to know there's discussion you want to participate in and for which you've done some work/reading and not be able to find it, or have to sift through a number of other conversations to pull out the relevant posts. I think that could get unwieldy and tiresome.

Conversely, if I didn't participate in the book club, I might get tired of trying to pick through to find recs or whatever else (I don't hang out in Literary, so I don't know the usual content, though I have read a bit recently to see whether I thought a book club could work within its cofines) amongst all the book club discussions. Or I might dread the monthly onslaught. Or I might feel like I couldn't just jump in with something non-related if a hot-n-heavy book club discussion was in progress.

If we can support a separate thread, which it seems we can at the moment, I think that's the way to go.

Yeah, the book club notion is to address the simple fact that it is difficult to have a sustained discussion in literary because not everybody is reading the same thing. That's the point.

I really don't see the need to bend over backwards and create a bunch of precedents (time limit/probation on the thread). I don't think that kind of accomodation is really fruitful. We only have a few simple structural rules here, and thread creation is covered. If it gets voted down it gets voted down and people will live with it. If we try to create special case sub-procedural rules to make everybody happy then you just wind up with endless exceptions. That way lies madness! Ultimately you'd wind up with a set of li'l special weak, probation-only threads which is just a weird dynamic. Regular threads or we don't really need them, I think.

Take everything into account, and then take a vote. It's got to be simple.

I think it's a great idea, either as its own thread, or inside the literary thread. My preference is for creating a new thread because then nobody who either was involved or not involved would have to dig through posts to find what they wish to discuss.

Sorry. I've actually had to work today.

What I envisioned was a continuing discussion of a specific work which would mean, for the most part, on any given day there would be a book under discussion as well as a book or books assigned for reading for the next discussion. I don't think the Literary folk would appreciate their thread being hijacked just to hammer out the details of book club, much less, to actually hold book club on a regular basis.

This is pretty much what I thought with some in between discussions about which books might be next.

When I brought it up, I'm not sure what I thought as far as the (I really wouldn't even call it a kerfuffle) thing. One of the points Hec and hayden made was that there was little discussion of a book and it's various interpretations and themes and all that stuff that makes my toes curl. While I didn't agree with some of the things that were said, I did agree with that part.

The Literary thread was to me, like that guy you know is good for you, and he's really nice, but you don't really feel that zing, you know? There's no chemistry. I want toe curling, soul-lifting (or crushing I suppose) discussion of books.

It was mentioned that us not having that kind of discussion, when we seem to have no problem doing it with tv shows, might be an argument for the anti-intellectual bias of the thread. A counter-point was made that in the show threads we're all reading from the same text, and I thought "Hey! All of us reading from the same text would be cool!"

So no, not a solution to what ails Literary, but me wanting to tell Literary that it's nice, and I hope we can always be friends, but a thread where I can get down and dirty with a text (kinda like that nice guy's hot moody older brother).

Not an argument, just 'splanin myself, and probably far too much about my love life.

What I'm still unclear on is, to put it as bluntly as possible, which side goes where? Did people want to move the litcrit to the Book Club thread and leave Literary to the anti-intellectuals, or the other way around?

If nothing else, you had me laughing out loud at my desk, so thanks for that at least.

More seriously, I agree that this isn't so much intended to separate the two groups as it is responding to one aspect of the kerfuffle, which is that some people are really jonesing for some more focused literary discussion. For a handful of reasons, that's not a need that the Lit thread is currently meeting. My hunch is that there won't be much of a change at all in the current Lit thread, though already the kerfuff does seem to have sparked some interesting discussions.

Has anyone checked in Literary to see if they'd allow a book club thread to operate inside there? It's really not a viable alternative if it's a non-starter.

So no, not a solution to what ails Literary, but me wanting to tell Literary that it's nice, and I hope we can always be friends, but a thread where I can get down and dirty with a text (kinda like that nice guy's hot moody older brother).

Loves on Heather

I would think- and this may just be me, that a book club would take over that thread if it operated within it.

It's not just that the conversation was disjointed before (like Natter or Bitches where everyone hops from one topic to another), but it had to be disjointed, because the chances that any of us were reading the same book at any given time were so slim that it was pretty much always going to be "I read this really good book!" "Me too, but it was years ago, I liked it though" "Hey I read this book." There really was no way around that. A book club however would be pretty focused discussion. It would be like matter and anti-matter. I think maybe a better analogy than drabble and foamies would be Press and Angel trying to exist in the same thread.

I could be completely off base though.

I think maybe a better analogy than drabble and foamies would be Press and Angel trying to exist in the same thread.

Maybe trying to do Angel deathmatch in Angel?

JenP has said what I was thinking about saying. I'll just point towards her and nod vigorously.