So I wanted to start another concept...I say concept rather than topic because if people like this, many new threads would be required. We occassionally look at books around here. I noticed recently some discussion of the DaVinci code though I did not get involved because I had not read the book. We occassionally end up discussing books in various topics. Wheel of Time has come up dozens of time, for example.

What I would like to do, for those who are interested, is begin a study of some of our favorite (and least favorite, if you really want to study what was wrong with it) books. A no-holds-barred, completely spoiler-rich environment in which those who have not yet read the book should probably not participate unless they don't ever plan to read the book.

We could even, if people were interested, suggest a book for discussion in a week or a month to give people a chance to read it first. In that way this would be like a book club, but I want to study the books with a different angle than most book clubs take...with the question, "What did this author do here that made this book so good?"

If this happens, perhaps you, Christine, would like to set up some guidelines? I think a month in advance would be necessary (maybe it would depend on the length of the book)- a way to select each book, set up the thread that announces it and gives a start date for discussion. Would we need to determine in advance if there is enough interest in a book to select it? (after all, if one is selected, and almost no one reads it...) You know, stuff like that.

Reading is not just something we love to do, but something we must do in order to write (though I find my reading time has been cut down since I started writing, and oh yeah, having babies!).

Thanks for the idea - I hope it happens!

We do have a forum for discussing published hooks...what if we extended that to discussions of books as well?

Another thought would be to break a book down by chapters. I know there are downsides to that, but it has positives also. If I am on chapter 4, and someone else is on chapter 2, and I start discussing chapter 3, then the person on chapter 2 might be persuaded into viewing chapter 3 differently.

Of course it is just a thought.

I suggest a nomination/voting process for selecting books. Each month anyone at all can feel free to nominate a book for the next month (preferably off the list of hugo and nebula award winners), and then we come up with a simple democratic system for selecting the actual book. Actually, we'd be nominating for the month after next, because theoretically in a given month we are working on acquiring/reading the book for the next month already.

I do have a suggestion for our first book, which we could begin on May 1st. I suggest it because it is a quick read (and we've only got 3 weeks until May), mots people have probably already read it, and its popularity warrants a look at some point anyway: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Like I said, we could start that one May 1st quite easily and begin nominations/voting for our June 1st book.

I have no doubt it would be interesting, but I wonder to what extent it would be helpful (or even if it might be harmful.)

I'm not saying that reading fiction isn't important for writers; it is. Neither am I saying that looking at what other writers have done is not useful; it can be.

But I think that focusing too much on what makes a particular book work is not necessarily a good idea. For example, in in-depth analysis of all the techniques OSC used in writing Ender's Game would be very useful to me in writing an imitation Ender's Game, but not as useful for writing a different book.

That's not to say that there's nothing for aspiring writers to learn from Ender's Game. In a discussion about how to portray intelligent children, or how to use bits of dialogue outside the normal POV, or how to have a character deal with guilt, Ender's Game could certainly be used as an example.

But I think it's more productive to discuss topics related to writing -- techniques, themes, rules -- and to illustrate them by using examples from good books, rather than focus on the books themselves.

As for the issues Eric brought up; I agree to an extent that you can't try to imitate what an author did in XXX novel (that's not learning, that's copying), but I also think there's something to be learned from every book.

Namely, you can learn what not to do from just about any novel, and you can see--like you said--how an author made certain things work.

And a lot of these observations will be generally useful, too. For instance, say we're looking at George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. It'd be useful to study how he made a story with so many viewpoints and major characters, and so much jumping back and forth between subplots, remain interesting and interconnected. It would also be helpful to see the disadvantages of such a structure.

For getting into a nitty gritty, chapter by chapter discussion in a public forum, I see two dangers. One is the temptation to over quote the book...I have no idea where the line is, but doing a book chapter by chapter in a public forum seems quite likely to cross that line. The other problem is the one Eric mentions...getting that invested in a single text, particularly when you aren't ready to consider the work as a whole because you're only partway through, might be disadvantageous.

People read at different speeds and intensities too. I read through a book the size of Dune or any of the Wheel of time books in a couple of days if the prose is sweet and still read it in under a week if I like the book at all. That somtimes means giving up sleep, food, and any other activity that is not required (sometimes it has turned out that the activity was required, too). Rereading a book is less intense for me, but also quite a bit faster because I feel free to skim some parts. For someone like me, it is simply impossible to separate out a given chapter except by the internal chronology of the book as a whole.

But that is just to say that there are reasons that the concept might not work for some people, and that there are some cautions about posting overly specific examinations in the public forum. Those cautions are probably particularly strong with newer books, too. But I'm sure that you can find a way to iron that all out. Reading groups can be a valuable way to get into a book. But most groups concentrate on the ideas of the book, not as much on the craft. I don't know whether that's a function of the reading group structure itself or the fact that most non-writers (and far too many would be writers) concentrate on high concept to the exclusion of art.

Also, if I like a book, I don't like to put it down. I read all 5 Harry Potter books in 4 weeks.

I like the idea of suggesting books to read ahead of time. We could post books and a date to be read by or a date that we start discussing it. People could suggest a book and we can vote on which one to read.

I like the idea.

My mother-in-law participates in a book club in which the members take turns choosing the book to be read. I like that concept because they invariably end up reading books that would not have been chosen democratically. The end result is that the members' are forces to expand horizons, sample styles and genres with which they're unfamiliar, and quite often are pleasantly surprised with what they've read.

For writers, I think this is useful, too. Even if you're focusing exclusively on Sci-Fi or Fantasy (which I understand most of the Hatrack writers are), you can learn a lot about character, description, and good storytelling in general from more mainstream sources.

If you like this idea - and we could vote on it, or let Christine decide, since it's her concept - I'd nominate Christine to make a list of who is scheduled to choose the book for the month. We could submit our names as being willing to choose the book and lead the discussion for that month.