EN World Book Club

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Just another book idea, what about some of the books that influenced the creation of D&D? I'mm thinking of maybe the first Elric novel (Michael Moorcock), Three Hearts and Three Lions (Poul Anderson), one of the Dying Earth novels (Jack Vance), etc. Somewhere, I've got a list of books that Gary Gygax has pointed to as being sources for the game.

 

[kingpaul]

Hmmm...an ENWorld Book Club. That sounds quite fun.

*subscribe to thread*

 

[FraserRonald]

Count me in for the book club.

Since we're doing the cycling between awards and classics, what about 1 month, "award book", next month "classic" and then "D&D influence book", based on the ones listed in the 1E AD&D DMG (or elsewhere . . . was there a list in the 'Basic' books?).

As for an editorial board, what about if we just allow one person to choose? Get a list of those interested and do it alphabetically by last name. Everyone gets a chance and we don't need to worry about discussion (there's something to be said for benign dictatorships).

In any case, however it works, I'm in.
Edit: for really, really bad spelling mistakes.

 

[KnowTheToe]

I think putting together a list of people who want to participate and having people who want to choose the books go individually by last name would work great.

Not everyone will want to choose a book, I know I don't. To give people an idea of what people would like to read, we could start a thread where suggestions are kept and who ever wants to run it can update the top post with a current list of suggestions. We also have to be comfortable that not everyone is going to want to read the same book and there may be months that have low participation.

Lets try to start the first book by the 15th.

 

[Sam]

I think putting together a list of people who want to participate and having people who want to choose the books go individually by last name would work great.

That sounds good to me. I'll volunteer to keep the "list" of people who want to be on the selection list. Once I get a handful of names, I'll randomly select someone and they can choose the book for that month.

August 15th sounds good for this.

So, if you have any interest in being involved with the selection process, post so here!

 

[Umbran]

One suggestion that sounds so simple as nobody would think about it until it came up:

Require that all selected books be currently in print. There's a lot of good fiction out there folks would like to suggest tht would be difficult to get hands on quickly.

 

[myrdden]

I'd be interested in this.

Myrdden

 

[Sam]

Require that all selected books be currently in print. There's a lot of good fiction out there folks would like to suggest tht would be difficult to get hands on quickly.

Good idea. A simple check would be to see if it is available from Amazon (and shipping). If not, then it's not eligible.

Also, been thinking about having one person select the book to be read. Don't have any problem with that, but I do like the "rotating book type" concept. Not sure how you ensure that happens if there is one person each month selecting a book, other than telling that person they have to select a "New" or a "Classic" or a "D&D influence" book, which limits their choosing ability.

 

[FraserRonald]

Good idea. A simple check would be to see if it is available from Amazon (and shipping). If not, then it's not eligible.

Also, been thinking about having one person select the book to be read. Don't have any problem with that, but I do like the "rotating book type" concept. Not sure how you ensure that happens if there is one person each month selecting a book, other than telling that person they have to select a "New" or a "Classic" or a "D&D influence" book, which limits their choosing ability.

Good call on the in print thing. Didn't even think of it!

As for book choosing, if we do it alphabetically, I guess a person could defer choosing if they really wanted to deal with a classic. Would this cause too many problems? Is there a way that each of us suggests one book from each category and then they are randomly drawn? I'll trust someone with a hat and a bunch of numbers of whatever.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I'd like to be in on the selection process, so put my name on that list.

Also, as far as the type of books go, I don't think we need to keep them in a specific rotating order (1. New 2. Award Winner 3. Classic 4. D&D influence). Some of these catagories are going to overlap anyway (classic/D&D influence or classic/award winner in particular). As long as we don't end up choosing 2 very similar books in a row, I don't see any problems with allowing the person who gets to choose have a more open selection criteria.

Also, are we sticking to just fantasy, or are we also going to include SF/horror/borderline books as well? I don't have a problem with any of them, and having the options open may make it more interesting. But, thats just my opinion.