I think a book a month, or perhaps bi-monthly would work well. I mean that's not to say that people who finish the book in a week cannot post up their thoughts, just to give other, slower readers time to join.

It'd need loadsa dedication from the members though to be honest

Also the idea of a quotes thread being discussed is a great idea in my opinion. The Literary Genius thread on the face of it is a great thread, but there's no discussion, it's just people posting up what they think is genius, nobody is responding.

I'll PM Archangel to see if he still has the code for the books banner he made me.

If this goes off well, can we decide on books perhaps a week or so before we begin that actual book? I live in a small town and we haven't any book stores, so I'd have to make arrangements to go out and get a copy of whatever it may happen to be.

quote Harvest Moon girl

I say you start off small with short stories and then, if everything seems to be working out, you move on to discuss novels.

I think this is a pretty good idea. To attempt an online book club involving novels may go downhill quickly, as many people have different interests and limitations. We have to consider money and the availability of the books. It would be best if they were not too unique in nature, so that finding them would not be as difficult. Perhaps we could search for legal and free digital works as a test run before we start asking members to get a copy of the novel? It might be a good idea to play around with the themes, so that we would be able explore different genres, as well as the likes that we are accustomed to.

Also, the quotes idea seems interesting. Perhaps we could set up a way to organize when someone could get a turn to post a quote, such as 2-3 members a week. They could also explain the significance of that quote and why they decided to share it to help spark a discussion.

quote Arcaida

If this goes off well, can we decide on books perhaps a week or so before we begin that actual book? I live in a small town and we haven't any book stores, so I'd have to make arrangements to go out and get a copy of whatever it may happen to be.

Same here Arcaida, since I'm 15, I have to ask my dad to take me to the nearest book store, which is around 25 miles away.

Well, to help bring traffic, you can allow magazines to have their own threads. For example, even though IE deals with current events, they don't have threads for magazines such as Newsweek or The Newyorker. Same with people who want to talk about music magazines but at the same time there aren't many threads for the magazines in the Music Forum.

I think with the quotes thread, it might be better to have someone "run" it, so to speak, where one person will start the thread and maybe kick it off, and then if you want a quote to be discussed you PM it to that person and they'll post it up. Kinda like the interview process in Loungin' I guess.

It seems a bit silly to have someone run it but at the same time I think it could become very disjointed if there's nobody running it.

I like Harvest Moon Girl's idea, I think it would definitely be interesting to hear why people love particular quotes, how they came across them, how they influence the rest of the novel etc., I think it would be a lot better than people just posting up random passages of text, as when they are taken totally out of their context they become somewhat meaningless.

Still say someone should create a vs thread. Perhaps Harry Potter vs Twilight; one prior fad vs the next? Heavily moderated to avoid the typical "HP cuz tilight suks!Q111", but enough freedom as both are not regarded as literary classics such as if we threw in, say LOTR.

A versus thread for what? Simply to discuss the relative merits of the works? It has always been my impression that such discussions tend to be short lived when the rampant fanboyism/fangirlism gets cut out...

But it might work. It should at least be fast-moving and interesting. I say go for it.

Versus threads spark a bit of debate and get people interested in the forum pretty much. I know the HP vs LotR thread was what first brought me to this forum way back when.