These people think that, far too much the thread gets "hijacked" away from their conversation re: X book.

Nono. I don't feel like the thread gets hijacked at all. I feel like we're all reading so many different things that we never really get past Person A and B.

ITA with MM. And I too was curious about the question Jessica brought up and withdrew.

. I feel like we're all reading so many different things that we never really get past Person A and B.

Okay, but...I guess my question still applies. I mean...you read Z book and loved it. You wanna talk about it. A and B are talking about X book. What's stopping you from popping in, saying "Anybody else read Z? LOVED IT!" so that Person D can say "Yo! I read Z and I loved it up until the demon-monkeys ate the frog princess and then I was all 'Shah! Whatev!'" while A and B continue talking about X?

Mostly that not a lot of people will have read Z, or will have read it recently, same with X book. So it becomes a lot of people saying things about A-Z books without any of the kind of discussion I feel I would get out of a book club.

I thought it was pretty well consensed that the Lit thread doesn't lend itself to that kind of discussion, which is why I brought up the book club thing in the first place.

I thought it was pretty well consensed that the Lit thread doesn't lend itself to that kind of discussion, which is why I brought up the book club thing in the first place.

It may well have been, but I still don't think it makes sense. There's nothing stopping you from finding people who have read Z or telling somebody "Dude! Z! Read it, it rocks!" and getting people to read it and talk about it in Lit rather than starting a whole new thread.

ITA with MM. And I too was curious about the question Jessica brought up and withdrew.

I thought Jessica's question was answered. Did I misunderstand the withdrawal?

Okay, but...I guess my question still applies. I mean...you read Z book and loved it. You wanna talk about it. A and B are talking about X book. What's stopping you from popping in, saying "Anybody else read Z? LOVED IT!" so that Person D can say "Yo! I read Z and I loved it up until the demon-monkeys ate the frog princess and then I was all 'Shah! Whatev!'" while A and B continue talking about X?

MM, the point of book club is not so Person A and B can continue their discussion on Book X, obviously they can talk about Book X until there's nobody who wants to talk about it anymore. It's so Persons C-Z can participate in A and B's discussion of Book X with both the time to read Book X beforehand, and then have more then a couple hours to respond to Book X discussion before A and B are either gone or off discussing Book Y.

When we treat these threads like chat rooms things seem a lot easier then when we treat them like posting boards. It's a lot harder to maintain discussion on one particular text when only one other person has read the text or is interested in discussing it, and that person may only log on in the mornings while you are the afternoon owl. It's a whole different thing when a number of people pop in and out to discuss the same text (like in show threads.)

MM is me, here.

MM, I think one of the attractive bits for people is that you'd have an entire thread where everyone is discussing the same text, rather than just a few people. Something like a replacement for the episode analysis that always happened while/after something aired. But the only time that a significant number of people are reading the same thing at the same time is when a new Harry Potter comes out, so there isn't a lot of opportunity for it. A Buffista Book Club would encourage people to have a common text to pick apart which they had read recently enough to remember it well, giving an outlet for focused discussion.

At least that's my sense of the thing.

And I too was curious about the question Jessica brought up and withdrew.

You don't consider it to have been answered? (Serious question - Jess asked "is it A or B," at least two or three people said "neither." If there are people who don't agree with that answer, by all means speak up. But I did sort of think the question had been addressed.

A and B are talking about X book. What's stopping you from popping in, saying "Anybody else read Z? LOVED IT!" so that Person D can say "Yo! I read Z and I loved it up until the demon-monkeys ate the frog princess and then I was all 'Shah! Whatev!'"

Well, it's been fairly well kerfuffed that something is stopping us. Whether it's occasional in-thread resistance, or the dimness of memory making people not want to get too in depth without going back and taking another look, or just the pace or structure of the thread, well, who knows. What we do know is that a number of people do not feel like that particular thread is a fertile environment, and this is a partial attempt to address that.

Wolfram, I'm still not seeing why you can't set that up in Lit. If one person is a morning poster and the other is an afternoon poster, being in a different thread isn't going to change that. Adding another thread isn't going to increase the time to read a given book or facilitate Persons C-Z discussion of said book if they've read it. So far, this Book Club thread just sounds like a recommendation to read a book with deadlines. Nothing about that needs a whole new thread.