LD4all Book Club: [Ishmael by Daniel Quinn]

Can we have zombies? :}

I never read World War Z (i heard good things), and The Zombie Survival Guide was entertaining AND Educational!

so short answer: yeah!

Hey just a quick suggestion:

When we finally decide on a specific book to read, can the original poster note it in the first post? That way I don’t have to be browsing the whole thread to find which book is the current one. Thanks :happy:

lol ok got ya :smile:

Yep, we better get deciding! :tongue:

Ok, I’ve thought about it and I think the best way to choose the first book would be for anyone who wants to suggest a book to do so, and then we can vote on which one to read first. We might do something different for future books, but I think this’ll be a good way to start.

Genre… anything, absolutely anything, either fiction or non-fiction. It can be fantasy, classics, horror, crime, sci-fi, (the aforementioned) zombies, philosophy, science, political, religious/atheist … any book at all that you think is good and that other people might enjoy reading, from the Lord of the Rings to the Mating Habbits of the Common Garden Bee :tongue: .

So maybe if we have until midday thursday gmt (i.e. 3 days from this post) to suggest books and then we can vote on them. When suggesting a book it’d be good if you put the title and a quick sentence to say what it’s about. :smile:

Great idea!!

Alright, then I’ll just throw in a suggestion to get things started.

It’s White Fang by Jack London. It’s a short novel first published in 1906.

It’s about a wolfdog, named White Fang, born in the wild and later introduced to civilization. It compares the animal and human worlds while also delving into issues of loyalty and morality.

It’s not too difficult to read, relatively short, very cheap to get (can even be read for free online as it no longer falls under copyright law) and in my opinion very entertaining. Some parts of it can even be a little philosophical and/or educational. Other than that, it’s also just a very nice story. :smile:

as long as we’re suggesting things, here’s one i’d love to re-read: Illusions by Richard Bach

again, it’s short and pretty easy to read. It’s massively entertaining, highly philosophical, and downright fun. I believe it’s still under copyright law, so a trip to the local library would be in order.

Thanks for the book suggestions guys :smile:

My suggestion is Dracula by Bram Stoker. The story is relatively well known, and is about a vampire named Dracula who moves from Transylvania to England and starts to bite various people, and so is hunted by Van Helsing and gang.

I think what makes the book really worth reading though, is how it’s written. The story is told through the diary excerpts and letters of the different characters. This means that you get to see each character’s point of view, and really get to know and feel for a deep character behind each of them. It’s exciting and has a lot of nice touches to it.

I’m in for Dracula. Bonus points if you read Carmilla too while we’re at it.

I’m in! Ill be sure to check out some of the books recommended here! :smile:

I got another idea:

The topic creator should gather the list of suggested books to read, create a poll with a few of the suggestions, provide a link to a small synopsis/brief description of each suggestion and add a poll to the topic with the suggestions so we can all vote.

Set up a deadline for the voting process and the suggestion with more votes will be the chosen book.

How does that sound? :smile:

Sounds great. How would I go about adding a poll to the origional post though?

Bruno - If we do read Dracula I like the idea of reading Carmilla as well, I’ve never read it (truth be told I’d never heard of it) but the description looks good :cool:

If you cannot add a poll by editing the topic, it might be a good idea to create a new one and as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man - I mean moderator to merge the topics.

Or you could ask one of the Mods if they could add a poll to your topic. :razz:

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I’ve PMed a mod :wave: :bruno: to ask about adding a poll.

Right, suggestion time is over, so we have three suggestions.

White Fang by Jack London - to quote Svenshinhan: "It’s a short novel first published in 1906.

It’s about a wolfdog, named White Fang, born in the wild and later introduced to civilization. It compares the animal and human worlds while also delving into issues of loyalty and morality.

It’s not too difficult to read, relatively short, very cheap to get (can even be read for free online as it no longer falls under copyright law) and in my opinion very entertaining. Some parts of it can even be a little philosophical and/or educational. Other than that, it’s also just a very nice story."

Illusions by Richard Bach - to quote Win Laik Pya: “it’s short and pretty easy to read. It’s massively entertaining, highly philosophical, and downright fun. I believe it’s still under copyright law, so a trip to the local library would be in order.”

Dracula by Bram Stoker- to quote me :tongue: : "The story is relatively well known, and is about a vampire named Dracula who moves from Transylvania to England and starts to bite various people, and so is hunted by Van Helsing and gang.

I think what makes the book really worth reading though, is how it’s written. The story is told through the diary excerpts and letters of the different characters. This means that you get to see each character’s point of view, and really get to know and feel for a deep character behind each of them. It’s exciting and has a lot of nice touches to it." (This would also include the optional extra of reading Carmilla at the same time)

I’ll edit the first post of the thread to put these suggestions in it, and I’ll let you all know about voting when I’ve heard back from the mod :smile:

Alright, let’s do this. I’ve added the poll, with an initial limit of 5 days (this can be changed). I’m honestly torn between Illusions and Dracula, so I haven’t voted yet. While we let the poll populate for a while, here’s a couple other things we can do— * Discuss how exactly this is going to work; if we have a host, if we’re supposed to bring articles; what we’re going to talk about or do about our readings. Just pile up ideas in the spirit of brainstorming, they won’t all get used, but perhaps we can come up with something nice to do about the reading.

  • Promote the book club. I made a badge (which I’m adding to my signature in a second) and the code for it is under the fold there. You can make your own, use mine or adapt it to taste, but do make an effort to spread the word!

[spoiler] LD4all Book Club :read:

[size=11] [url=https://community.ld4all.com/t/ld4all-book-club-ishmael-by-daniel-quinn/33896/1] [color=#8b4513][b]LD4all Book Club :read:[/b][/color][/url][/size] [/spoiler]
By the way, does anyone not know how to use the [spoiler] tags?

Btw, how are people gonna get their hands on the books? o.o

Illusions will likely merit a trip to the local library, but the other two are available on Project Gutenberg.

/me is going for Dracula

Really… not much reasoning behind it, but I’m intrigued by the way it’s written, and I found a website which photocopied the novel and it looks nice (WAY easier to read than the version on Project Gutenberg)

Thanks Bruno for putting up the poll, and I love the badge!

I think that those members who suggested books should also vote in the poll, whether or not they vote for their own suggestion or someone else’s.

With regards to how the discussion will work … It could start by people posting any interesting thoughts or observations they have while reading the book. If people put what chapter they’ve read up to outside of the spoiler tags, then it would help people to know what posts to read. This would hopefully lead to some discussion.

If anyone has any ideas for particular questions to do with the book they could post them, and people could try and answer them. Alternatively the person who suggested the book could act as host and prepare a few questions for people to talk about.

Just a couple of ideas, but I think a big part of it will be seeing how the discussion naturally progresses.

I’m definitely in, guys! And we’ve got some interesting reading suggestions so far. Will we start a new thread for the discussion? Should we agree on a “reading time” before the actual discussion begins? I have no idea how a Book Club works over the Internet. I’ve only attended real life ones (yes, I’m a huge bookworm).

I think we should set a “reading time” and then start the discussion, so we do not have problems with spoilers and stuff. If a member gets into the discussion thread, he/she must know that we’ll take for granted that he/she has already read the book, and thus there’s no risk of introducing spoilers. Last time I attended a literature discussion group, it was very annoying to discuss a book knowing that some people had not yet read it thoroughly.