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Please post comments and suggestions here.

Jenn and I are curious as to some ideas you all my have as we work through our lists. I had some that I wanted to run by everybody, let me know what you think!

One: several books on one or both lists are the first or middle of a series. How do you all feel about doing some side reads as those books come up for those of us who want to continue on in the series?

Also, nearly all of the Harry Potter books are on the children's list: one idea is to maybe next summer do a "summer at Hogwarts" and read through the whole series.

Occasionally we may want to do a challenge, such as reading two books off each list in a month, instead of just one. For some shorter books, this will be easier to do, but for longer ones it may be more difficult. We will have more discussion of this in the future.

Are there any kind of themes some of you would like to look into, as far as linking some of these books together? Or perhaps a theme for picking monthly reads sometimes?

Please throw out any suggestions you have, whether it's about choosing a book every month or about some challenges you would like to see or anything else that makes you go "Hm, what if....."

Alana... Challenges seem good.. we can start a yearly/half-yearly challenge on any particular author/theme/awards received/year of publication or so... and ask readers to join the challenge..

Themes can have Fantasy, Children, Classics, Thrillers/Mystery or even Poetry (for a change)

Regarding series, i like to read books in order.
We can also add some games in this group like playing with words/guessing books/authors etc

Alana wrote: "Jenn and I are curious as to some ideas you all my have as we work through our lists. I had some that I wanted to run by everybody, let me know what you think!

One: several books on one or both li..."

I would definitely prefer to read books from a series in order and all together :)

Challenges and themes sound like fun. I also prefer to read books from a series in order.

Is it possible to get a list of the books that have already been read by the group - I am not sure from the progress lists, which have been read independently and which by the group - or is there a list somewhere I am missing? Just so I can catch up on the ones already covered by the group :) One for the children's list would be grand as well.
Cheers

Just look on the bookshelf. There are five books that have been read by the group and threads to post in if you would like to comment. I missed a couple of them so will catch up when I can.1984, Lord of the Flies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dracula and And Then There Were None have been read so far.

Julie,

There is a folder called "The Lists". I have crossed off books that have already been read on those lists. http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

I wonder if we should limit the number of nominations. If we are only getting 20+ votes, should we be splitting those votes over 6 or 8 nominations?

I think that's a good idea Mike. We have 8 nominations this month and only 16 votes spread out between them.

In the past we haven't had so many nominations so it hasn't really been a problem. If it continues, maybe we'll look at limiting it to five, perhaps only those that are seconded or something. But I like everyone feeling like they have a voice and a vote.

One thing we can do to avoid ties tho, is if you see that your choice is not in the top two or three spots within a day or so of the voting ending, you might look at changing your vote to one of the top choices that you'd rather read. I don't know if everyone's aware that votes can be changed. I've left the polls that way for that very reason. We won't do a tiebreaker for winning by one vote. .... having the limited list ensures that we will read the other book eventually. Point being, if your choice only has one or two votes, consider changing it top one of the top three that you'd rather read (or dislike the least).

Alana wrote: "But I like everyone feeling like they have a voice and a vote."
Agreed If we are in this group for the long haul, we will eventually read every book anyway and the question is just a matter of order. The discovery of books which I would not have otherwise read is the great opportunity the group provides.

Mike wrote: " If we are in this group for the long haul, we will eventually read every book anyway and the question is just a matter of order."

Exactly :)

We have had some discussion in this thread before about some ideas and "challenges," so I wanted to move our discussion about the summer challenge here.

Here are some thoughts/concerns that have been raised:

Does this mean that we are expected to be reading two books per month for this group during the summer? Or will the books picked for this challenge take the place of the monthly reads? These are all titles from our list, so they would not be eligible for another monthly vote. If these are taking the place of the monthly reads, that would be fine, but if we are looking at increasing our books from this list over the summer months when we have vacations, family gatherings, the opportunity to get outside and be active, which could be burdensome.

There was not much discussion on the LOTR thread last summer. If we look back at the threads for February, March, April, there was not a great deal of posts. By adding to the number of books under discussion, the discussion could be further thinned out. Although we can continue to add to the threads after the official month of that book's discussion, there rarely is much give-and-take after the official time. If the goal is to discuss the books together, not just to encourage people to read books, adding to the amount of books in a given period might go against that goal. If we want to encourage more reading for the summer, why not make that summer challenge something off the official list? We would like to see us increase the amount of discussion for our given title.

Last year we read the LOTR trilogy in addition to a monthly pick. The thought was that a little more reading gets done of the summer as people relax.

Again, the summer project was intended to be additional reading for those that want to pursue extra reading during the summer. The discussion threads remain open, just like our regular monthly reads, and people can participate at a later date if they wish to do so. It wasn't intended to create pressure for those who may be busy doing other things.

The idea is NOT to put pressure on anyone. All of our reading is for fun, for our enjoyment, and for all of us to get some fun discussion out of our books as we read them. Often, a group pick may be a book that someone just isn't interested in and having some alternatives can be appealing. Also, if we read just one book per month, it will take us several years to finish our list, which is fine, but it does move us along a little faster, plus allows for some alternatives for those who may have already read one of our monthly selections.

Jenn and I had debated whether to try a summer reading project this year, but felt it might boost some interest, and we had several people ask us when we were going to post a poll, since they were excited to have something extra to read during the summer (which for many is a slower time in the schedule, thereby allowing for more reading time). However, if that is not the group consensus and there is not an interest in doing a summer project, we are certainly willing to change that and not include one. We just wanted to try something different to keep things interesting.

We did try to select books that were varying in length, allowing for different timeframes to read over the summer, and even thought including some longer books might make it easier to get to those books, since often it's challenging to read a 600 page (or more) book during a single month.

Again, these are just thoughts we had in coming up with a summer project at all, but are certainly not set in stone. Last year, our theme choices included finishing books in a series, like The Giver or the Time series that we had already started. Lord of the Rings happened to be the one that was picked, I think because we had recently read The Hobbit. We thought just choosing books from our list and not actually adding to our number of books to be read might be encouraging, as we would proceed through the list faster.

Regardless, we welcome all of your thoughts and insights. Do we want to make a change to the challenge? Do we want to have one at all? Or just books that aren't on our list? We can always remove the poll and start over later, if we choose to have a summer project. We are completely open to all of your ideas and suggestions! Thank you all for your input!

I was the one who voiced the opinion that being expected to read three books in addition to the monthly reads would be a bit too much. Our recent titles have been lengthy, not always easy to complete in a month. I would find it hard to ad three more titles to what we are doing when I am already committed to other groups. If people want a summer challenge, I suggest something off the list as was done last summer. However, I would really rather that we worked on greater participation in the monthly reads. Ading 4 open and active threads to our current group seems to run the risk of thinning out an already very thin discussion.

Any other thoughts, suggestions, from others? We can only go based off what you all tell us, so please make your voice and thoughts heard so that we can make the best decision for the group.