Squee and actual content discussions live side by side, hand in glove, blah blah blah in the Comics thread. They always did in the Buffy and Angel threads. I think it's an artificial distinction to separate them.

And again, I can only say that the impression I got from the regular posters in Literary was that it's very much a real and un-artificial distinction to them, that many of the people who have given the thread the cozy, ramshackle atmosphere Robin describes regard critical discussion as hostile, as something that would turn the thread that they've invested time and energy in into a place where they feel belittled and talked over and like they have no voice and no place.

I want a Buffista book club, but I don't want it so badly that I'm willing to make these people feel like second-class citizens in what is, by seniority and participation level, kinda their own thread. I'd much, much rather have a separate thread.

See, I think a baker's dozen is small. But that's neither here nor there.

And I don't really see that we'd have more people talking about books than we do comics.

Yeah, I don't have a good sense of how many people would Book Club it.

Like I said, I'm actually neutral on a Buffista discussion. Shock!

And Pokemon is on, which is my cue to get my ass over to the workout room, so I'm off.

Of course it's arbitrary. Everything on this board is arbitrary to an extent.

I don't have a problem with arbitrary. It just seemed like your argument was trying to be more substantive than that, and I was having a hard time figuring it out.

But no "discussion" is threatening to swamp Literary.

Well, no but I think that if we were all discussing the same book it might. I think the thing with the literary thread is that it was- from what I was getting from the discussion last week- the opposite. That getting into picking apart a book, like one of the shows, wasn't happening in there for reasons other than the individual poster.

Well, no but I think that if we were all discussing the same book it might. I think the thing with the literary thread is that it was- from what I was getting from the discussion last week- the opposite. That getting into picking apart a book, like one of the shows, wasn't happening in there for reasons other than the individual poster.

A dedicated thread would only solve one of the problems, and that's the simple one of common point of discussion.

In US time, each show took place once a week, for an hour, over a three time-zone spread that allowed for maximum concentration of discussion immediately following that period. There's no way to do that with books.

Even the book discussion in LotR doesn't ever reach that level of posting, and there you had people who'd mainly already read it, in a thread dedicated to that universe.

But it had enough that it needed it's own thread. And while it wouldn't be dedicated to one universe it would be dedicated to one book (at a time mostly). With LotR, you have people who are interested in LotR- in either book or movie form. With a book, you'd have people who are interested in reading and discussing many universes. I think that has the potential to be a huge number of posts.

(Glad to be arguing with someone else so it doesn't feel like I'm harping on MM who I adore).

With a book, you'd have people who are interested in reading and discussing many universes. I think that has the potential to be a huge number of posts.

I don't get the feeling that it would, both from the number of people who've seemed enthused about it and from the reasons I listed earlier as to why I didn't feel that posting would get out of hand anymore than it has in the comics thread. Which is yet another reason to try it in the lit thread and see what happens.

The addition of the LotR thread, as MM said, was because it was threatening to swamp something already. In that respect, it was an organic outgrowth of existing discussion.

Book club, well, that's still an untested theory. If you're right, then it will be obvious to many that it needs its own space. If I'm right, then people have found a new way to connect within an existing space.

I can see that, but I'm also seeing a lot of people for it. I am ok with it being wherever, but it seems that a number of people who are for it don't think it will work that way, and it's not my preference. I think I'd rather vote with them since I'd like as many people to participate as possible, and if it's frustrating to the very people who want it that'd be counter-productive.

I don't actually have a position on whether the Lit Thread or a new thread are a more appropriate place to have a book club. Whichever makes it (a) more likely to succeed, and (b) less likely to cause problems for the B.org community as a whole, gets my vote.

But I'm a bit disgruntled at the continued statements about how the Lit thread residents are scared off by the big nasty bugbear of critical thinking. I appear to be in the minority on this, but it continues to rankle. Can we kindly stop patting some of the local residents on the head, saying in effect, "You're so cute, with your Bridget Jones and Georgette Heyer reading. Now go sit at the kiddy table while we grownups talk about Middlemarch."

Yes, I'm sure that's not how it's meant. But that's how it is coming across to me. YBMV.

Can we kindly stop patting some of the local residents on the head, saying in effect, "You're so cute, with your Bridget Jones and Georgette Heyer reading. Now go sit at the kiddy table while we grownups talk about Middlemarch."

I'm sorry if it seems to be coming out that way. In fact, I never saw the choice of reading material as being very relevant even to the original discussion that this idea came out of. It's not (necessarily) that some people want to read things that others don't. Part of why I was hoping that we could have some sort of overlapping structure, rather than one monthly book, was so that different genres or types of book could be on the table.

The issue with the Lit thread and the desire of some people not to mess with its current construction, to my mind, is that some people want a certain type of discussion of the books we're reading; others a) don't want it in that thread, or b) don't want it at all.