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Hi All. It has been a while since we've talked about themes for group read nominations. I'm just gonna throw some ideas out there and see if anything sticks.......

**Fear of Flying Things (or Death From Above)
Killer birds, alien invasions, aerial battles, quidditch.....

**Water
Pretty self explanatory - anything from oceans to drinks, under the sea, rain, tears.....

**Apocalypse (In honour of 2012)
Anything involving the end of the world - In honour of 2012. It could still happen..

**Animal Perspectives
We did some brainstorming on this one in another group, and you'd be surprised how many books there are that come from an animal's perspective..

**Something to do with an apartment building
Totally selfish. There's a JG Ballard book I really want to read that would fit here. Plus this could cover things like Tales of the City...

Animal perspectives

I vote for the JG Ballard book, whatever it may be. He's awesome!!!

I keep meaning to read some J.G. Ballard. Also Tales of the City. Though I do really like "Fear of Flying Things!" as a theme!

Ruby wrote: " There's a JG Ballard book I really want to read that would fit here..."

I'm guessing High-Rise? I think you will likey. Given what a slacker I've been on getting things read I won't be voting, but all these choices sound good and hopefully I'll get into the reading thing again :-)

Hi Ernie. The process we've been using is:
1) Pick a theme
2) Nominate books on that theme
3) Vote on all the nominations
4) Time to buy the book & read it
5) Discussion starts
I post the dates as we go, because some will take longer than others.
At the moment, there is a discussion starting today on Golden Compass (our last pick).

We've also got a discussion coming up in mid-October for House of Leaves (which we didn't vote on - it was random read).

If you have a look through the threads in the "Book Club" folder, the full details on each group read are there.

Whitney wrote: "Ruby wrote: " There's a JG Ballard book I really want to read that would fit here..."

I'm guessing High-Rise? I think you will likey. Given what a slacker I've been on getting things read I won't ..."

Yup. It's High Rise. I cannot find a copy to borrow locally, and I'm having trouble getting the cover I want in a paperback online.

Water might be a good one - Life of Pi springs to mind...

Okay, so we've narrowed it down to:
-Water
-Fear of Flying (Things)
-Animal perspectives
and -Anything that gives us an excuse to read JG Ballard's High Rise.

Hmmm....

My picks by subject would include:

-Water - The Water Babies
-Fear of flying (things) - Nothing comes to mind for this one.
-Animal perspectives- Watership Down

and of course Ballard's High Rise, which would be my first pick.

Ruby wrote: " -Anything that gives us an excuse to read JG Ballard's High Rise.

Hmmm...."

Maybe the theme should be "dystopian British novels from the 70's set in modern high-rise buildings"?

I'm starting to think we should alternate between themed reads (maybe water for the next one) and books we all just feel like reading right now. That way we can have both!
Maybe have them alternating roughly fortnightly?

Or will people be less enthusiastic about group reads if we do them more often?

I think fortnightly might be too frequent, but that may be because I personally read at a snail's pace!

"Animal Farm" would be a good animal perspectives read, and it's short :)

I was thinking more in terms of monthly themed reads and monthly random reads (which would probably work out to be one or other read fortnightly). That way if you miss one read you can jump into another?

You're right though. It does work out to be a lot of reads! And a lot of reads to moderate......hmmmmm.....!

I should also add, the random reads would probably tend towards books a lot of us have either already read or are really wanting to.

Okay, I've gone with "Inner City Living & Dying" to take in High-Rise. Next time, it might be Fear of Flying (Things) or Water. All good?