Club Read recommends (an experimental thread)

Recommend posts of interest from within LT, especially from Club Read. Add a little commentary. This is a late-in-the-year-experiment, so, really, post whatever you like.

StevenTX has spent a large part of the year reading Dorothy M. Richardson's Thirteen book, 2000 plus page neglected Pilgrimage series. He has recently posted a summary on his thread here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/159637#4401258

Here is Nickelini's recap of her experiences reading Virginia Woolf over the years, and her recommendations for anyone who is a newcomer to Woolf.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/158479#4306640

Yes, a post!

That is an awesome post about Woolf.

Linda is back after a break and posting terrific stuff on her African American Literature class, here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/158155#4414184

If the forthcoming World Cup Finals in Brazil puts you in the mood to read more of that country's literature or history, here is SassyLassy's recent introduction to Brazilian history and literature from Reading Globally:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/158806#4278802

Further down the thread you will find reviews of some of the works mentioned.

#3 - Steven - thanks for the shout out. If I can be of help to any Woolf readers, I'm glad . . .

A wonderful new review by Rebecca, on 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning by Slavko Goldstein, can found here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/161359#4416338

A fascinating idea for a thread, Dan. I was just thinking about a few things I saw in common with a couple of people's threads—something I'm sure they are not aware of, but darn, I can't remember now what it was. If you do this for 2014, I'll keep my eye out.

Avaland - I'm hoping to try this for real in 2014, but not sure how well it will do in CR. One purpose of this thread is that it might be a nice place for someone to start who is either new to the group, or has been out of touch for a period of time. I think if you come across CR mid year, it's difficult to know where to begin.

And we're all busy and can lose track of threads sometimes. I'd like to know if there's a great review out there at times when my LT time is limited.

#8 Thank you, Dan!

Since I expect to be away for lengthy periods the first half of 2014 (though I might have to sneak in here just to stay sane), I might find this useful. I suppose I am an odd duck in that I am less interested in "great reviews" than the intriguing conversations.

Helensq has a recent, very nice, relatively succinct review of Lolita here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/147603#4376880

I suggest when you start in 2014, you ban responses to the links here because 1. it will make the thread more cumbersome 2. it is apt to come across as a mutual backscratching thread (sorry, someone has to play devil's advocate here).

I mixed Lois. I know this kind of thread can cause issues, and I would like ways to avoid them. But I think the conversations bring some life to the thread. For example, I want to thank you for encouraging me to finally catch up with Helens thread, which had gotten lost in the long list here.

Anyone else have advice on this? In the mean time, I'll think on it more.

FYI - this what I posted on the 2014 planning thread shortly before starting this:

As a suggestion, I would like us to have a thread where we can highlight nicer reviews and posts, but one that avoids all the negative possible aspects of such a thread. Any suggestions on how to do that?

(Link here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/161627#4402054 )

You can't "ban" responses, the most you can do is request that people not chat in the thread. But as has been said, conversing is what makes threads worth reading, and if there was a complete lack of anything save "check out this review: LINK" posts frankly I think it would be doing a disservice. Do you honestly think people are really going to attack "hey I thought this was a great view" posts?? I just don't see that being an issue.

I don't think anyone would attack such things. I think more of the potential problems are that a certain populace within club read will post in the thread and it will devolve into a mutual backslapping contest. To a certain extent this is unavoidable. It will be hard to maintain the incredible diversity club read has to offer throughout the year as the regulars of this thread get busy, etc. The challenge I think is to keep the circle from tightening too much, not sure how that would work though.

ETA: I like the thread idea by the way. in case that wasn't clear.

There are so many great reviews here in Club Read--some members hit #1 on the Hot Reviews list with virtually every review they write--that I think it could turn out to be next to impossible to keep this thread both fair and manageable in size if the focus is primarily on praising book reviews. It's quick and easy to go to a book page and thumb a review you like, but it gets cumbersome if you have to go to another thread, check first to see if anyone else has already linked it, copy a link, then compose a message. I'm afraid the results would be inconsistent and would draw discussion away from the reviewer's personal thread. And as long as people post their reviews to the book page, it's easy to find them there, so there's no need to used this thread as an index.

What I would find most helpful is to post links to messages that have interesting and useful information outside of book reviews, including those in other groups and not necessarily something recently posted. Though this wouldn't include book reviews themselves, it could certainly include information and discussions that are posted along with them (e.g. Nickelini's advice on reading Virginia Woolf that followed her review of Night and Day). The result would be a much shorter and manageable thread that would serve as a finding aid for things that are otherwise hard to locate. You could even reserve message #1 as a composite and categorized list of links.

I agree with Steven. It doesn't bother me if reviews are posted here, but it isn't necessary to me personally since I generally keep up with everyone's threads pretty well. I haven't really used the feature where you can "favorite" posts yet, so the idea of an index to come to here with those particularly informative posts or discussions sounds appealing to me.

These are great responses.

I'm listening but I'm going to persist in my idea more. Too many of us get overwhelmed by Club Read. We need a thread to help alleviate this. It doesn't have to be Club Read recommends, and whatever that thread is can include informative posts of long term interest.*

(*or a separate thread could be dedicated to that)

My idea was to have a thread where users point to highlights so that if you are behind (or new) you can jump to those posts.

I'm noting all the flaws: possible back-slapping; the thread itself can get too overwhelming; there simply is no perfect thread of this type. (Also ideally it should have a dedicated monitor who does keep up with all threads - that isn't realistic. This stuff is supposed to be fun, not work.)

Maybe one solution is to make this monthly (or less often)

Ideas/thoughts?

>Dan I can see a monthly recommends being confused/determintal to what are you reading thread.

I wonder if it'd be better if we combined the CR recommends with the Best of the quarter. We could start the Best of quarter at the beginning of each quarter, that way we could recommend what we each think is a good review from other threads and then at the end of the quarter (through a message board announcement) we each list our own best reads of the quarter. Might be interesting to see what differences lead to.

A ongoing quarertly thread won't be too long and still informative enough as a jumping off point, plus we could reduce the number threads we post to, and eliminate confusion.

>22 stretch: The "what are you reading" and interesting articles aren't monthly this year, they'll just be continuous threads so that once starred, they will remain starred & easy to find throughout the year, for those who are interested in doing so.

I thought this thread was interesting and doing just fine, then we started discussing how to manage the thread.

Well his point in making it was "experimental," to see how it would go for next year, since, ya know, the year's about done. So, discussing it is kind of the purpose.

I just figured we would continue with the experimenting rather than discuss how to experiment.

Lilisin - I think the discussion is good. That you thought the thread was doing well is good to know (encouraging!)

Kevin - I don't like the idea of combining with quarterly bests. The quarterly bests focus on titles and the joy of lists. ( I love book lists! - cannot seem to get enough.)

I too thought the thread got a good start (e.g. posts 1-6 and 9 with avaland's idea to draw attention to common topics in different threads). I would find it less useful to see links to things that are already highlighted within LT, e.g. reviews that I would see in Hot Reviews. This thread seems like a place for links to some of the posts that I "favorite."

#22, 24

Kevin, Monkey is right that we're going to have ongoing threads for What Are You Reading and Interesting Articles this year -- she's going to make sure they get continued as necessary.

We will have a message board -- in fact I'll start one in a few minutes.

We will have Best Reads by quarters -- Colleen/NanaCC is going to do this.

We are not having quarterly theme reads but we are discussing the idea of having theme or group reads here. I am not sure whether there are enough people who want to do this to make it happen.

We will have some kind of World War I theme so that people who want to read about that period have a place where they can exchange reading ideas and thoughts. So far, we are just exhanging book ideas here. Again, this will probably be relatively unstructured because that's what Club Read has been best at.

And we have an an introductions thread here.

Hope that answers your questions, and now . . . back to Dan's experimental thread!

This will make more work, but how about a thread for interesting posts that are not reviews (maybe combine with the Interesting Articles thread?), and a separate thread to recommend or highlight excellent/enlightening reviews?

To go further, and some people already do this, if a member is very impressed with a particular book, they can point this out on the What Are You Reading thread.

>16 dchaikin: Sorry to have missed your original question on the other thread.

I think the root idea for this thread is interesting, but if it is just a pointer to various 'great' reviews, I probably would not use it, mostly because my definition of a great review (which I think is entirely subjective) is perhaps somewhat different.* I'm more or less on the same wavelength as Steven in #19, his 2nd paragraph. I don't care much if I've missed a "great" review, but I do mind if I've missed some interesting discussion, a bit of fun, or an oddity like a review of a pencil sharpener!

But then, I'm a bit of an oddball and tend to run in contrary ways, which is how CR got created (ha ha, it was a bit of a rebellion after a year in the 2008 75 Book Challenge group)

It seems to me that there are two ideas here: 1. to create a way that people can catch-up and find 'great' reviews they may have missed. 2. To point out interesting stuff going on around CR.

I didn't mean to derail the experiment with discussion, but the discussion is very interesting in and of itself! ha ha, maybe we should be self-referential and post a link to the discussion here!

If anyone can pull it off, it will be you, Dan, as you strike me as one of the most well-traveled around the group - in CR!

*seriously, define what is a "great" review. On second thought, don't do it here. I'll go create a thread elsewhere for it:-) (I'm having a little flurry of personal activity before the great exile to come)

I am wondering if we shouldn't just expand the purpose of the Interesting Articles thread to make it interesting articles and other links (i.e., to Club Read and other places on LT). But maybe that wouldn't do everything you're trying to do, Dan.

Lots of concern about this idea. I like how Lois puts it in her number 2 - a thread to point out some interesting stuff happening around club read.

Bas is writing Haiku. You can start with this review of Skelton's 15th-16th century poetry here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/161669#4416172 , or go up a bit higher to just after his latest Camus review.

I've arrived! A mention on Dan's experimental thread (just joking)

Dan, do you see the thread working something like the Salon's pimping thread?

That was one idea. I like those threads. Focus here will be different, hopefully more in line with Club Read's atmosphere.