Chaos Reading discussion

So our first CR Group bookshelf is up!
CLASSICS: http://www.goodreads.com/group/booksh...

There's a known bug with the GR system, so the book count shows up as (0) next to the shelf titles. Don't be fooled though. All 91 books are there!

Just click on the name of each shelf, then you can switch between "main" and "cover" view. "Main" will let you see which of the books you have on your own shelves, allow you to TBR books, see the book details, show how you've rated them etc.

There are some fantastic selections there - thanks everyone!

If anyone has classic books that they'd recommend to be added to this shelf, just post them here, but please check to see if they're already on the shelf before you post.

Also, if there are books people don't think should be here, feel free to let us know.

If anyone has preferred covers or editions they'd like showing, we can take suggestions for that too.

With regard to the books already on the shelf, I've added everything that was suggested in the original thread except for two books: The Giver and Last Orders - The simple reason being that they're less than 20 years old. I'll add them to the Future Classics thread, but I just wondered if anyone has an idea of what the "classics" minimum age should be?

Also, Derek suggested some Nobel Prize authors in the other thread (Naguib Mahfouz, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Pablo Neruda, José Saramago) - Please let me know if you want to nominate specific books for these writers.

Cheers!

did we get Homer's Iliad and Odyssey on here?

checking...

we didn't and i really think they have to go on there...

or would they be a better fit in poetry, since they really are epic poems...

I don't see a problem with them being on both. I can add them in the next time I update the shelves (I'll do updates in batches to keep myself organised.) Go ahead and add them to the poetry thread if you like :)

Also, I've been looking at ways we can keep the shelves from getting too big & cumbersome in the future as we keep adding to them. If you want to throw around some ideas, the topic is here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/9...

I recommend The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

The Stranger by Albert Camus one of my favourite books ever.

Anna wrote: "The Stranger by Albert Camus one of my favourite books ever."
That one's up on the shelf, Anna.

I'm spending the morning go through the shelf and TBRing some of these. There are quite a few here I didn't know about, so I'm looking forward to finding something new to love..

Just going through my favourite books to see which aren't on any shelves yet, and I have a couple of childhood classics to suggest:

The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
Little Women
and
The Water Babies

Ruby wrote: "Just going through my favourite books to see which aren't on any shelves yet, and I have a couple of childhood classics to suggest:

The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
Little Women
and
The Water..."

Wouldn't be bad to have children classic shelf.
I remember reading The Water Babies when I was young teenager - really didn't like it.

Happy to start a separate shelf for classic children's books if people are in agreement. That would mean more space on the main classics shelf too, which is a good thing.

i think that is an excellent idea...

back to pull out that tag....i will get it sooner or later...apologies..

how bout 'The Steadfast TIn Soldier'? My fav!

No worries - I'll start a separate thread for children's classics.

I think I read this list wrong. Are there 3 Herman Melville books and no James Joyce? Is there Michail Bulgakov but no Fyodor Dostoyevsky? :-/

Jason wrote: "I think I read this list wrong. Are there 3 Herman Melville books and no James Joyce? Is there Michail Bulgakov but no Fyodor Dostoyevsky? :-/"

Nominate some books, and I'll add them in the next batch. I do remember that it seemed quite Melville-heavy, yes!

Crime and Punishment does deserve a place here :D and maybe Journey to the Centre of the Earth?

Jason wrote: "I think I read this list wrong. Are there 3 Herman Melville books and no James Joyce? Is there Michail Bulgakov but no Fyodor Dostoyevsky? :-/"

One Melville is too many, imo - and I wasn't overly impressed with Bulgakov, either.

I love Bulgakov but I don't know if he belongs on a small (only 91) list of classics. I hate Tolstoy but I think War and Peace or Anna Karenina should be on here because of their enormous influence on literature. For a group called "Chaos Reading" there seems to be a lot of non-chaotic books being read.

What about Thomas Pynchon or Jorges Luis Borges?

Palace Walk is the first book of The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk / Palace of Desire / Sugar Street. Should, perhaps, the entire trilogy go on the shelf instead of one book of the trilogy?

Great shelf! I'll be referencing it often.

Jason wrote: "For a group called "Chaos Reading" there seems to be a lot of non-chaotic books being read."

The theme of the group is a diverse range of books. Not "books that are chaotic". :)

:-) I'm just being snobbish. I apologize. But maybe there shouldn't be duplicate authors. I mean, there are so many classics out there its a shame to give the space to an author more than once (I'm looking at you Steinbeck!)

or perhaps a way to list multiple titles for an author as one selection, maybe?....not sure how as i am not really in the know with all the GR ins and outs, but a thought

Yeah - We've been discussing some ways to limit the book shelf selections. For Pratchett, we did a poll, since he's so prolific. Looking at ways to maybe "Vote books off the island" so to speak, but haven't come up with anything very workable yet.
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/9...

Ruby wrote: "Jason wrote: "For a group called "Chaos Reading" there seems to be a lot of non-chaotic books being read."

The theme of the group is a diverse range of books. Not "books that are chaotic". :)"

Though, of course, chaotic books are welcome!

Derek wrote: "Though, of course, chaotic books are welcome! "

Of course! We need them to go with our chaotic minds :)

Simply superb. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

How did I forget to nominate The Gormenghast Novels here before?

An author I'd love to see on the classics shelf (particularly for this group) is Ishmael Reed.

I've read most of his books, but the one that really stands out for me is Mumbo Jumbo. It also seems to be his most widely-read and acclaimed work.

Did the chaos working definition of a classic ever get nailed down? Since withstanding "the test of time" is usually part of the definition, I have a hard time calling anything written too recently a classic. Some argue the cut-off to consider something a classic should be pre WW1 or WW2 (I tend to agree with the WW2), then your "modern classics" (oxymoronic as it is) come after that.

I think the cut-off between 'modern classic' and simply 'a good recent book' is by necessity somewhat arbitrary, but I like the <20 year-old books going into "future classics". If GR is still around in 50 years, it would be fun to go back and see which books made the cut.

I don't think we ever really pinned it down, but the cut-off of <20years being a "future classic" works for me. I'm not keen to split the "classics" from "modern classics" - I think we might as well lump them in together as we've done so far, but compelling arguments against that are also welcome.

It would be interesting to see if we're right about what actually stays relevant. I have no idea what it is about certain books that give them longevity.

Updated 9 Jan 2013

CULLING!
Now that we're getting close to 100 books (we have 99 on this shelf), I think it's time for some culling! The easiest place to start I think is with authors who have more than two books on the shelf. At the moment, those authors are:
P.G. Wodehouse - 3 books
John Steinbeck - 3 books
George Orwell - 3 books
Herman Melville - 3 books
Thomas Hardy - 3 books
Charles Dickens - 4 books

1) Now, we could settle this with a poll for each of these prolific authors, but I think this would result in a few too many polls running all at once. Also, it would mean people could only nominate one book per author, rather than their top 2 book choices. I'm happy to organise a pollopollooza if people want to do that though.

2) The other thing we could do is run a poll to vote books (any books) off the Classics shelf. People are actually able to add entries that aren't on the list (if I allow "write-in" votes) so you could add whichever book you wanted out. The problem again, is that you can only nominate/vote on one book. Of course, we could make a rule that if a book was already listed, you can't vote on it. This has a very high risk of being too confusing for people though.

3) The other option might be to start a new discussion thread for each of the authors listed above and people can discuss and vote for their two top book choices for each author. I can add it by hand (and I WILL be using my fingers), using a points system: say allocating three points for the top choice and one point for the second choice. This would be more accurate, and possibly more chat-inducing. As long as people try to be very clear about what their choices are so they don't break my brain.

Another disadvantage of options 1 & 3 are that they only free up 7 slots, which is a short-term solution to overcrowding at best. Then again, we can always run other little ad hoc polls as we go, based on different criteria.

This is the first cull we've done on a shelf, but there will be lots more ahead as the shelves start filling up, so I'll be happy when we figure out a fair way to do it.

What do people think?

Personally, I would happily lose Moby Dick and absolutely anything by Thomas Hardy, but I understand there are people who actually think those are worth reading... So I guess I'd be all for voting books off the island.

I'm torn. One the one hand I don't really see a huge problem with having lots of books on the shelves (I mean come on, just look at mine...) but I can see how it could be overwhelming. I could live with a little culling down to 1 or 2 books by each author. Favorite classics are just so subjective, though!

I do really like the word "pollopollooza" though.

Hehe. I do want to cap the number of books on the shelves, partly to make them manageable, but mostly so that they don't turn into a mammoth list of any book that can vaguely fit into that category. I'm hoping for a list of high quality books, that really reflect the interests of the current group members. Quality over quantity!

There are plenty of other groups on here with expansive shelves on a range of subjects, (including a lot of crap books posted by the authors themselves), but I'd like ours to be the BEST of the BEST - at least according to the group members. Our group members have fantastic and varied tastes. In this instance, I think subjective is a good thing. :)

One issue with the pollopollooza (option 1) is that the author polls would need to be re-done for each shelf. For example, you might think Animal Farm fits the Classics category perfectly, but 1984 might be your vote in say, the sci-fi shelf. (Just an example - I'm not trying to start a debate!)

For what it's worth, I think option 2 is the fairest and most comprehensive way to do it, but it would be impossible to manage as a poll. People would get confused, I think. Of course, we could always do it as a conversation thread instead of a poll. Have people post comments about which books they'd vote off, and let me worry about tallying them up? That way I'd have people's comments explaining their votes.

Otherwise, I'm for option 3 for now. Noting that we'll need to do more culling in future.

Ruby wrote: "Have people post comments about which books they'd vote off, and let me worry about tallying them up? That way I'd have people's comments explaining their votes...."

If you are willing to do the crazy amount of work here, this one seems like the best option for achieving what you're after - I'm assuming arguments FOR would also apply? I think this makes it more likely that people will choose books that have a deeper meaning for them. Extra points for saying why they think a book is a 'classic', and not just a good book.

Whitney wrote: "I'm assuming arguments FOR would also apply? I think this makes it more likely that people will choose books that have a deeper meaning for them. Extra points for saying why they think a book is a 'classic', and not just a good book. ..."

I see your point, but my worry is that this will just end up being a complete re-do of the shelf, as people want to add new books at the same time etc. I think if someone wants to get rid of a book though, others should be able to counter their argument though, certainly.

Maybe all the books that get nominated to be REMOVED are removed unless someone else disagrees?

Adam wrote: "I'm confused, will the polls be for books to keep, or books to remove?"

That's my point exactly!
People will always be confused about what we're doing if we use an electronic poll, and some will think it's "for" and some will think it's "against". In a poll, you can't explain your selection, so mistakes won't be picked up.

The two options I've suggested that involve actual polls (options 1 & 3) are both for keeping books - ie choosing your top books by that author. You could do it the other way around, but that's riskier in terms of confusing people, as most polls are about picking your favourites.

I like the idea of a discussion to decide which books to remove, and removing ones that no one steps up to defend. Maybe going forward, books should only be added to shelves if one or two people second the nomination?

I don't know about seconding nominations. My first instinct is against it, as I like the idea of some more obscure things popping up now and then, particularly when it reflects a currently active member's interests.

I'm happy to hear people's views on it though...

That's a valid point, and one I thought about as well. I like obscure! But if everyone nominates a bunch of unique books (as in, ones only they have nominated), the list is gonna get big. I don't know if I really see a way around that. Hoping people have more ideas!

Adam wrote: "The trouble is, people tend to think in terms of books they like rather than books that fit the category to an extent."

Exactly. That's why I'm leaning away from electronic polls. At the same time, we've already done the "nominating books we like" bit. The next bit needs to be about removing some, otherwise we'll essentially be starting the shelf over again.

Based on our chat: I think we definitely need some sort of discussion thread to get this done AND everyone seems keen to talk it through BUT starting seperate discussions on each of the prolific authors listed above is waaay to much work just to free up 7 slots.

SO I propose.. we let everyone nominate any books they want to vote OFF the shelf, via discussion thread, while encouraging people to consider placing votes for some of those authors above who have multiple books on the shelves.

If you're happy with that, I'll post the thread straight away. We can figure out scoring as we go.

Okay with you guys?

Excellent! Works for me.

Just another thought but if you are specifically only worried with culling the "classics" shelf, maybe remove books that are listed under other shelves such as Crime and Punishment that is also on our "Russian Literature" shelf.

Another approach is to remove books that are classics but can be categorized under a more refined shelf such as Gravity's Rainbow or Ficciones, these are classics for sure but more refined maybe as a postmodernism shelf. This could also go for The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit that are classics but also better listed as fantasy.

ok

Ben wrote: "Another approach is to remove books that are classics but can be categorized under a more refined shelf such as Gravity's Rainbow or Ficciones, these are classics for sure but more refined maybe as a postmodernism shelf. This could also go for The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit that are classics but also better listed as fantasy. "

In my opinion, "Classics" is a meta-genre. While Crime and Punishment may also be in a Russian Lit. shelf, it is surely a classic and probably more deserving of being on the Classics list than many that are already on there.

I think the best way would be to come up with a clear list of criteria regarding what makes a book a classic. Some sort of quantifiable method of selection instead of the qualitative one that has already happened.

Even better would be to remove the classics shelf altogether and just place them in a more immediately appropriate genre shelf.

Just some ideas. :-)

Jason wrote: "Even better would be to remove the classics shelf altogether and just place them in a more immediately appropriate genre shelf."

Which is pretty much missing the whole point - a "Classics" shelf should be _somebody's_ idea of the best books of all time.

I agree.. my own personal shelf is called "best literature" wherein we find Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Eyre, etc.

oh please dont forget ,Utopia, and Jane Austen novels,lol ooh and my most favourite is Dracula Bram Stoker.....and yes Martin,the Count of Monte Christo is such a great book!!!