GENERAL GUIDELINES AND RULES (How will this book club operate?)

**jbcohen** · December 28th, 2002, 05:46 PM

How will this book club operate? Will we all read a novel that is agreed upon then discuss it at a pre-appointed time? Once we decide on the January book will we all read it during the month of January and start discussing it on February 1?

**Rob B** · December 30th, 2002, 04:36 PM

jb-
read through the December Nominations thread and the discussion of Lord Foul's Bane.

We nominate a book about a month and a half in advance, that is we will start deciding what will be read/discussed in February NOW and when 1 February comes around, we begin discussing that book.

**Rob B** · January 2nd, 2003, 09:08 AM

Here are the summaries of the basic rules of the Book Club section. As with everything here at SFFWORLD, it is not ultimately set in stone, etc., etc. ...

Originally posted by GemQuest
at the beginning of each post someone makes about the book, they say where they are in the book (chapter would be best, because not everyone may get the same copy of the book so pages may be different) or what part of the book what they are going to talk about relates to. That way people know if they want to read the post or not. However, I for one know it's always tempting to read the SPOILERS FOLLOWING posts, and it also will disclude people from the conversation.

Originally posted by Llama
Just pick a date by which you would expect most people would have read the book and then begin the thread discussion on that day. Mirrors the way a regular book club operates -- people don't have discussions WHILE they're reading the book, they meet once a month or so and everyone's expected to have read the book.

That date being the first of the month.

Originally posted by Eventine
There's also the issue of discussing books as we read vs when finished. I'd prefer the as we read option. Although I don't like the idea of another forum, this is where it would come in handy as you could have a seperate thread for each chapter (like over on Janny Wurts' discussion boards) which helps prevent accidental reading of spoilers (Stor-All
Pointing out which chapter you are on and a spoiler warning IMO would work though.

Time Period:
A month seems to be the go. I also like the idea of picking the next months book in advance.
How about we let voting/suggestions for titles continue for another week, at which point the book is decided upon. Then in november we start reading / discussing ( I Know it's a while away, but this gives everyone plenty of time to get a hold of the book, and using calendar months reduces confusion).

These quotes are from: How about we start our own book club? if you want to read the full discussion

**Sammie** · January 21st, 2003, 07:56 AM

To add a new rule - the March nominations, for a book to get into the poll it will need TWO nominations

This SHOULD help target the polls towards more widespread interests. (Contradiction in terms?? Not sure......)

Anyway - feedback on this is welcome, and if it doesn't work out then we wont try it again. Please stick your feedback on the end of the february book poll NOT in the thread, as we want to keep this thread as clear and straightforward as poss.

Many thanks

Sammie.

Self Edit - Feb 19th - OK, 2 nominations to get in the poll is now standard. S.

Hemingway · March 4th, 2003, 11:16 PM

I am aware that a book such as SCAR may be able to work as a stand-alone novel, but when discussed I believe the elements of previous book will harvest a considerable portion of additional discussion, to which the readers who have read only SCAR will be ignorant of.

Thus I hope that any book that is a part of a conglomeration, even if its possible to be read apart from reading the previous novels, be relegated to perhaps a different book of the month discussion. I have no problem reading a book that is a part of a series, but I strongly believe they should be relegated to a separate area.

**Rob B** · March 5th, 2003, 03:07 PM

A very valid point. I agree we really should only nominate the first book in a series. However, The Scar really does stand on its own. Not reading Perdido Street Station poses absolutely no problem to people approaching Mieville for the first time in The Scar - characters don't overlap. Also, Perdido Street Station was a past BOTM, so chances are very high that people did read it anyway. Again, the books are only connected in that they take place in the same world.

On that basis, we should have disallowed the nomination of Deadhouse Gates as well, though it stands on its own.

I really don't think we need to start another book club discussion either. A gun is not being held to the heads of the forum members forcing them to read the book that has been chosen.

Going forward, we will try to abide by this rule, though

**Nimea** · March 12th, 2003, 04:51 PM

Ehm, what about having a book by an author who was just recently discussed?
Like China Mieville? Nothing against 'The Scar' really. But Mieville again? Just like nominating one of Steven Erikson's books again.

I hoped for more diversity. So that we could discover new authors . . . and there really were some interesting authors/books nominated.

**Rob B** · March 13th, 2003, 10:41 AM

Nimea:

Your point is well taken and I think it is a fair point to take into account in future nominations. And yes, I think an underlying purpose of the book club is to read and discuss books that are different.

Going forward, I'd say we should have some kind of window between books by the same author, perhaps 4 months?

I'd like to get other members input on this one.

**Nimea** · March 13th, 2003, 01:12 PM

Well, I could live with such a window. I could even live with 4 month. But how would be 6 month - just for the nice sound of 'half a year' . . .

**Lucky Joe** · March 25th, 2003, 06:54 AM

I agree that there should be a window between reading books by the same author, part of the reason the book club appeals to me is because it'll help me discover new authors. and six months would only be six books so that seems like a reasonable time frame.

I'm still fairly new around here and didn't join the Perdido Street Station discussion and haven't read the book, so am not very keen to read Scar, being set in the same world I feel like it would be benifical to read the first one first. But you're quite right nobody is holding a gun to my head, and it's probably a bit late to mention this anyway with less than a week until April.

**Rob B** · March 31st, 2003, 11:21 AM

Some more rule clarifications right here:

Each voting cycle only one book per author. For example, the May nomations contained two books by David Gemmell, so we will only be allowing one of the books in the poll.

Also considering raising the number of nominations to THREE. For May we have 4 books with more than 2 nominations and 4 with only 2 nominations.

While the poll allows for 10 possible options, that may a bit much. I'm considering for the purposes of the book clubs, we should keep it at 5 (after the May voting). Any other thoughts?

**Sammie** · April 1st, 2003, 02:47 AM

I think if we revise the number of nominations to three, we'll probably find that the number of books in the poll self-limits to four or five. I say, give that a trial period, if the number of books going in is still to high (or turns out to be too low) then we can revise it for the following month.

Agree that each author should only get one book per poll. About the 'reading another book by an author we already did' issue, though - if people don't want to read the book, it won't get voted for anyway....i don't see the problem, personally. The selection process is totally democratic atm - seems a shame to go imposing random rules on it on the whims of a handful of members. Just a thought...

**fluffy bunny** · April 1st, 2003, 05:25 AM

I'd say if you stuck 3 nominations for the fantasy section, leave it at 2 for the science fiction section (less people there at the mo)

**Rob B** · April 1st, 2003, 10:38 AM

About the 'reading another book by an author we already did' issue, though - if people don't want to read the book, it won't get voted for anyway....i don't see the problem,

Wasn't saying we should disallow another book by the same author, just that to keep the selection varied we should keep a fair time frame.

Next month's Fantasy poll (June) will require 3 nominations.

Science Fiction is still fairly new and not quite as visited as the fantasy forum.