The F-word discussion

This would be the time that I normally open a thread for nominations for FICTION and NONFICTION group reads to get us through January-June 2018.

Here's the question:
Do we want to continue doing both a Fiction and Nonfiction book each month, or is that too taxing?

I'm sure the rationale in the past by the original founders was that people could choose to read both, or one or the other; I continued to do it the same way when I became moderator because I liked that set-up.

My concern is that there hasn't been a lot of discussion in our group reads this year, or a lot in one genre, but not in the other. I'm not sure if that's due to people being busy or disinterested. It seems that nomination-time sparks a lot of interest, but then when it comes time to read the books, the threads become a bit more quiet.

Normally I don't mind chattering away on my own in the threads, lol, and the threads do stay open so people can dip in and out of them freely, which is great. I love seeing threads revitalized!

But I'm about to start a part-time job (in addition to my full-time job), and I'm also starting graduate school in January. I will still be around, but I will not likely be able to read both books each month while I'm in grad school. I'm happy to create the threads but it makes me sad if no one is going to be reading and discussing the books each month.

Would people prefer to do six Fiction books a year, and then six Non-fiction books the alternating months? For example, January-March-May-July-September-November would be Fiction and February-April-June-August-October-December would be Non-fiction - or vice versa.

That way there's only one book per month, which may encourage more group members to participate.

I'm open to suggestions here as well. If people want to keep things the way they are, that's fine - but if people want to try something different, I'd love to hear those ideas and see if we can incorporate them in this group.

I was looking over to see how many of the discussions I have participated in over the last year - and the ones I have not are all books I have read before or during months I have been busy. I like your idea of reading alternately - maybe that will lessen the pressure and invite more participation. Another suggestion is to have the person nominating the book, lead the discussion - we do this in another book club I am in and it seems to be working well.

Another thing we can do is nominate books month by month - nominate in mid-December for the January read, mid-January for the February read and so on.

Thanks for your thoughts, Kay. Sorry for the delay in my response as I wanted to give it some more thought myself.

I did consider having the person who nominated the book then lead the discussion. That also works in another group I participate in. But that group is also more active anyway, so I worry that if we add the discussion lead here that will deter people from even wanting to nominate at all. :/

I do like the idea of nominating books month by month, but I think we will still do the bit about alternating between fiction and nonfiction to alleviate some of the pressure of trying to read two books a month. Since no one else has spoken up with ideas, we'll give that a try for 2018 and go from there.

So next month (mid-December), I will post a nomination thread for what we would like to read in January 2018.

Thanks for your input, Kay!

Hi!! I've only participated in two reads, one fiction and one non since I joined August or July. Both books were amazing. I check in on discussions but don't always want to read all the books. I think having one option a month could increase participation, as some other clubs do a one book every four, six or eight weeks schedule to allow people time for other reading. So just generally I think this plan is good!

You might also open the door for other members to offer to lead discussions if they like. That could reduce your heavy workload... good luck in grad school! I'm a professor in engineering, so happy to chat about that.

Hi Cassandra! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree that going down to one book a month might be the best option in terms of fostering discussion. We'll at least give that a try. I'll post a thread for nominations very soon.

Thanks for the luck in grad school. I'm looking forward to the new challenge :)

Is there a criteria for nominations? I read books about women ... a lot of them have an interesting perspective without necessarily being a feminist perspective.

Hi, Ian. The best criteria is what is included in the group description:

1-Written by a feminist and/or a woman
2-Plot looks at how gender, race, class, sexuality, ability/disability, ethnicity, nationality, etc. shape us and our views of the world
3-Spark conversation about social justice and gender equality
4-Have strong female characters

My preference is to keep our focus on feminist issues in our reads since that is the purpose of this group. That being said, not every book we read is obviously feminist. That's where the discussion takes place. It's possible that some of the books about women you have read which have an "interesting perspective" actually are feminist.

If you haven't already, you might want to take a look back through the group read discussions or look at our bookshelf to get an idea for the sorts of things we read. That may give you an idea of what you might want to nominate for 2018.