18
votes
Reading Group
Anyone up for a weekly / semi-weekly reading group? Probably aimed at short texts, my experience is that groups that attempt long texts always fall apart as people get behind and can't participate anymore. Not just short fiction necessarily either, we could do poetry and philosophy and nonfiction too.
If you're interested, maybe comment with a text you think we should do.
If you do want to try doing fiction, longform.org has a "Fiction Pick of the Week" that are usually about 10-20 minutes, might be a good possible source: https://longform.org/sections/fiction
I've never been in a reading group/book club that wasn't like a school-ish thing. I'd be interested in participating - though I'm not sure what would be a good text I could offer. The Last Question by Isaac Asimov is nice, as is just about anything by Phillip K. Dick - how do online reading groups go about making sure everyone has access to a text if it isn't in the public domain?
edit: lol, found an online copy of one of my favorite PKDick stories, Roog
edit2: looks like the last question is on the interwebs too. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
I think most texts we would tackle can be found online, even if they're not technically in the public domain.
I would be down for some Philip K. Dick.
Would this restrict it mostly to science fiction and fantasy? I know that there's a lot of short-form fiction produced in those genres, with monthly magazines devoted to publishing these stories, but is there the same output in other genres? As much as I love science fiction, it might be a tad alienating for non-sci-fi and non-fantasy readers if the only short texts available to choose from are in these genres.
This concern aside (or possibly because the choices are more likely to be in my favourite genre?), count me in.
In my English literature course, we had a textbook full of short stories and poetry which were mostly not science fiction. It may be that there are a lot of science fiction stories that fit the length proposed compared to others, and there are at least some which are from other genres. I suspect that if we're diligent about balancing things out that we will be able to find enough content from a variety of genres - especially if we have a week/semi-week to find and decide on a text.
There are a lot of short horror and mystery novellas.
I'm definitely on board! At least, when we do fiction. I'm not particularly interested in reading poetry and such in my free time.
I think it would be really cool to do "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," and it seems like a natural thing given the interest groups we have here.
I'm down with this. How short of a text are we talking about?
Edit:
To Build a Fire, by Jack London
The Egg, by Andy Weir
The Gentle Seduction, by Marc Stiegler
The Bet, by Anton Chekhov
*A Family Supper, by Kazuo Ishiguro - I couldn't find a nice pdf version of this on the web, so I uploaded the story on pastebin, although the formatting isn't great.
I imagine that would be determined by what texts are proposed and supported.
So I'm assuming something like "The Subtle Art of Giving a F*ck" would be too long and not suitable for this?
Definitely! Neuromancer? It's pretty short, I think.
Count me in.
I would recommend "Tower of Babylon" by Ted Chiang.
How short are we talking? If it's something I could commit maybe 2 hours a week to, I might be interested in giving it a try. Could really be a good use of my commute time.
I'd totally be interested in the idea of doing a book club style discussion at short reads! There are a few favourites that have already been mentioned, so I won't repeat them, but if we get into a fiction/sci-fi/fantasy mood, there are loads of excellent short original fictions posted to Tor each week.