11
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Tildes Book Club - Should we allow nomination of trilogies? Should we have a length limit?
I made my first mistake coordinating this project. Gormenghast was nominated, but it's the second book in a trilogy so I excluded it. Turns out, @azaadi meant to nominate the whole trilogy. It hadn't occurred to me.
So what are your thoughts? I haven't known book clubs to include trilogies, but my experience is limited.
Please vote below and feel free to comment.
No - We should not devote more than one discussion session to one author/series at a time.
No - but just because people who don't enjoy the first are going to be "out" for two more months. Re-nominating later books in a trilogy could be worthwhile or folks who like the first can make a thread to discuss the later ones if they keep reading! But the structured book club shouldnt.
No - In my opinion, nominating the first book in a series is fine, but nominating an entire series would be too much.
I often enjoy reading trilogies/series so I feel a number of great books may be excluded. However, they bring more commitment, and I feel are somewhat antithetical to a common goal of book clubs. That goal being to explore a variety of new themes, ideas, and genres.
Sticking to standalone books also makes it easier to onboard new members, who don't need to read multiple books to "catch up" if they wish to participate.
So I would suggest starting with standalones for at least the first three selections, preferably on the shorter side (<450 pages), then open up the conversation to series at that point.
I think that the 1st book in a trilogy should be allowed. People can keep reading or not as they like
Yes - we should allow nomination of short series and trilogies if they are interesting.
If there's enough interest, I suggest having a separate book club for trilogies and short series. Meetings would follow the same time frame as the regular book club, with one book per meeting, so people could still read at the regular pace. That way people don't need to sit out multiple meetings due to not being interested in a series, and people can speculate and make predictions together at each meeting.
On that note, I'll raise another question for consideration: what about novels that are part of a series or trilogy, but stand on their own? My all-time favorite novel is Unwind by Neal Shusterman. It's the start of a series of four books, but for various reasons I've never actually read any of the other books. Unwind stands incredibly well on its own compared to most series and trilogies I've encountered.
I know it's not the only book like that. I believe a lot of Discworld books can be read individually. So, what are people's thoughts on nominating potential standalone books from series?
I agree with some of your ideas and my only real difference of opinion is re the trilogy/series book club.
I'm not going to coordinate more than one book club, but if there is interest for a trilogy/series book club run by someone else, I'm happy with it.
We already have the Dispossessed which is part of the Hainish cycle. If a series is loosely organized rather than tight, as for example Small Gods from Discworld, I think it is a great idea to nominate those books.
I also welcome books that are first in series, if they tell enough of a complete story that someone could choose to stop there. We have a couple like that in this list I think.