How Should We Make This Work...

It's been a bit hapahazard so far, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing it does make it a little difficult at times. So I think we need to come up with some sort of mechanism. Here's my suggestions...

1) work to a bimonthly schedule
2) two weeks before the end of the 2nd month, each person nominates up to 5 books
3) each person also gets to second two books nominated by any other person
4) one week before the end of the 2nd month, the 5 books with the most nominations (more if there are ties) goes to a poll
5) the poll closes at the end of the month
6 ) everyone reads and discusses the winning book...
7) GOTO 2)

Comments? Suggestions? Brickbats?

That's a pretty good flow-chart, but could I suggest that #3 be amended so that we get to only second one book.

Works for me.

Does anyone else besides Ian and myself have any opinions as to the flow of the Group Reads?

I like the idea of seconding 2 or more books. I also wouldn't mind seeing a poll where we could vote our top 2 or 3 choices, either weighted or not. It might not change anything or it might. It might get some books that are everyone's 2nd choice chosen. It might also be too hard to do for the polling we use.

The bimonthly schedule sounds fine to me.

if we vote for multiple choices, i do think they should be weighted 1st/2nd and maybe 3rd. But we'd either need to remember how many times we voted for each book or probably use a more sophisticated bit of polling software. I DO like the idea and will look about for appropriate software. It would be easy enough to do it online via Google "group" docs in their excel clone. But i'm suspect that many folks have already implemented such a system since there are countries (iirc) that rely on this method.

You might need to build in some time (a week, maybe?) for everybody to acquire the new selection.

I like the schedule, and since it's a bimonthly group read do we really need to account for the week it will take many if not most readers to acquire the book?

I really hate the idea of tying these reads to schedules. Not everyone can or even wants to read to a schedule. When the discussion peters out people will start chattering about the next thing. The next read will take care of itself.

Using the numbers as used in the first message:
1 -- I agree with Geneg about the timeline (would you believe my local library still has not gotten my interlibrary loan on the second book we read?! I can't even recall the title anymore.). On the other hand, a schedule would help people who don't check librarything very often to know when to come on to make suggestions and vote.

2 - Encouraging multiple suggestions makes sense to me. But I think five suggestions are too many. Three suggestions per person would make a more manageable list. Also I think a somewhat longer timeframe for suggestions would be better, perhaps 9 or 10 days.

3 - I agree with the original suggestion re option to second 2 books

I also like the idea of voting for at least a 2nd choice, if the voting sites perrmit that.