The Writer's Block Book Club: Book for June is "Catch 22"

Munkus Beaver

Hey guys, I've been having some issues getting an excuse to get my read on and especially to discuss said 'read on' with other people. I figure a book club where we read a book each month and have discussions around it would be a good thing.

The book for this month (June) will be: Catch 22

I have started reading this book myself while I was in the hospital and I thought hey, this would be a great thing to read with other people.

So no spoilers until we've read the book, or the amount of pages/chapters in the book, then spoilers may be posted openly.

If anyone has any advice on how to do this, how we should format reading versus discussing, and suggestions on how to break up the book(s) are appreciated.

Right now I'm thinking we can either split the book up and discuss it bit by bit or give everyone a week to read the book and then discuss it. But I'm open to advice on how to run this.

Post in here and let me know if you're interested, we won't start reading for a couple weeks anyway so we can discuss how we'd like to do this.

Big Dookie

Hey I want to get in on this.

As far as breaking it up, since I'm guessing it will be a new book monthly, maybe break each book into quarters that are discussed on the 7th, 15th, 23rd, and 30/31st of each month. So it would end up being roughly weekly. At the beginning of the month, the book can be broken up into which chapters should be read by each specific date. Before each date, all discussion in that section must be spoilered appropriately. Once that date hits, everything in the book up to that date can be discussed openly without spoilers, since it will be assumed everyone should have read up to that point by then.

So for example, for Catch 22:

June 7th: Chapters 1-10
June 15th: Chapters 11-21
June 23rd: Chapters 22-32
June 30th: Chapters 33-42

Anyway, just my thoughts. Not saying this is the best way to do it since I've never actually been part of a book club, but it was the first thing I thought of. However you end up doing it though I'll definitely be participating.

VanityPants

I'd definitely like to be a part of this!

As far as the formatting of this goes, I think it would be best to break the book up into quarters so at the end of week 1 we can have a group discussion up to the first quarter of the book and so on and so forth.

I think the more scheduled time we have to talk about it, the more active it will be, and it'll give us a chance to talk about what we think about certain plot elements and characters as we read them and compare it to what we think at the end of the book.

Big Dookie

Yeah, following up on my other post, if we wanted to make it a little simpler, just make it so that the whole book has to be completed by the 28th of each month. That way it can be truly "weekly" so it's easier to just remember that the next section needs to be done by Wednesday or Sunday or whatever instead of having to remember a specific date. It also gives a few days at the end of each month (except for February) to have a general discussion of the book as a whole before moving on to the next one. I kind of like this idea better now that I think about it.

ElJeffe

Depending on how much buy-in we get here, it will likely be good to have separate threads for each new book, and just preface each thread title with [TWB Book Club], or something. That way, if people want to spend a little extra time discussing the last book, it doesn't get in the way of discussing the next one. Obviously this doesn't become relevant until we've finished the first book.

I like Dookie's idea of breaking it up into quarters, as well. We'll also want to formalize the process of selecting the next book. Either some sort of nomination/vote process, or just assign a person to choose a book selected from those who contributed to the most recent thread/discussion.

Good idea, though, Munkus.

Munkus Beaver

I think it'd have to be done on a chapter basis for whatever we choose (and some writers are chapter averse) given that different versions have different page allotments, then you have your kindles and ipads and whatnot.

So are we thinking to have it be cut into chunks and discussed bit by bit as the route to go?

Magell

It might be kind of teachery, but if each book gets nominated by a person the person who chooses the book for that month can also provide prompts to get people talking about the book. In case discussion is kind of lagging.

I concur with the idea of breaking a book into quarters to discuss weekly. And if you want to reference stuff ahead of time spoiler it.

Also maybe add some links to amazon for the book in case people don't have it, although the library is always a good choice, especially for a book like Catch-22