Hello Readers!

A new tab, Stats, has the analysis from the prior two posts collected into one page.

I've updated the Current Selection tab to reflect our October, November, December selections, per our last meeting 17 Sept.

Also updated is the What's Next tab to reflect all selections in the database that have not been either already selected, or removed from consideration by the club at large.  That's 19 candidates for the club.

Please review the list of candidates on the What's Next tab before the next meeting (14 October), and lets plan to discuss and remove maybe half of them from the candidates list at the next club meeting, to make room for more interesting books we may want to consider as we head into 2020.

 Hello Readers!

I did a little more data scraping from the intarwebs, gathering some demographic information for the list of authors we've considered for the book club.

This analysis includes all books through the October 2021 selection (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry).

Books by Birth Year of Author

In addition to reading the world (see the previous post), I was wanting to encourage reading classics.  Our earliest born author is Alexander Pushkin in 1799 (The Captain's Daughter), our latest born author is Sara Baume in 1984 (Spill Simmer Falter Wither).  

I've binned the authors up by quintile of books we've selected, so this bargraph is a little bit odd since the selection is forced, but you can at least see counts of books selected by birth year band:

The unknown bin is all authors for whom I could not find a year of birth, but most of them are current working authors. 

• bin 1799 thru 1907 covers 108 years (pre WWI?)
• bin 1908 thru 1947 covers 40 years (between the WWs?)
• bin 1948 thru 1962 covers 15 years (the boomers approximately?)
• bin 1962 thru 1975 covers 14 years (GenX, aka latchkey or MTV generation)
• bin 1975 thru 1984 covers 10 years (Millenials? a little early for that but maybe)

When we examine the page count of books, by the birth year of the author, we see a general trend of larger books selected as the author birth year comes closer to the current year.  It may mean we are more willing to tackle larger books if the author is near us in age generationally.

Books by Gender of Author

35% of our selected works have been by female authors, and 65% by male authors. I note a pretty big shift from before 2017 to after 2017, where prior to 2017 we were more likely to select books by male authors, than we have been since 2017.

Looking at the gender of authors we have selected based on birth year, we see a pretty strong trend that when the author we select is younger, the gender tends to be female.  That may be a reflection of trends in publishing?  not sure about that.

Looking at the size of books we select by gender, not a whole lot of difference overall, but that pre- to post- 2017 stands out pretty strongly.  the average page count of a book we selected where the author was female is 358 pages, when the author is male the average book length is 380 page (this male page average includes Gravity's Rainbow).  As above, I note before 2017 our male authored books ran somewhat longer than our female authored books which is affecting the mean of course.

The trend lines in the graph below show that since 2017, we've been much more evenly split in total page count read in the year by author gender than previously.  during 2021 to date, I note we seem to be selecting male authors more than female authors so far.

 Hello Readers!

Our What's Next tab is updated with the list of candidates to consider for future club selections.

Here's some observations on our selection history:

How many books have we selected?

We have selected a total of 79 books, over a 7 1/2 year history.  2021 is a partial year, but I'm counting up through The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, scheduled for discussion in October 2021

How many pages?

From club inception to August 2021 (Through Klara, our last meeting) we have read 28,616 pages in the club.   

Our shortest book so far was A Christmas Carol (88 pages), followed by The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause (90 pages).  Our longest works selected were Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson (689 pages) much of which was not text, followed by Once and Future King (650 pages).  (Discounting Gravity's Rainbow at 770 pages...)

Our average selection has 372 pages, down a mere 3 pages from when I ran these stats back in 2018.

Is what we are reading well-rated on Amazon?

At some point when I was putting things on the list to consider, Amazon Stars was one of the things I paid attention to.  Here's how our selections have stacked up on Amazon:

Our average Amazon Stars is increasing (very slowly) overall, and we seem to not be interested in books without at least 4-ish Amazon Stars.  Note how in the last 2 years our variation in amazon stars has really decreased.  Some of that is the range restriction in 2020 from COVID19, we don't have many selections in that year, so that's part of it.  Not sure if that's a general trend at Amazon, or a reflection that we may be less tolerant of lower-rated books now.  The lowest rated book we have selected is now Amsterdam at 3.8 stars followed by The White Plague at 3.9 stars.  Note when we read Gone Girl, it came in at 3.8 but is now showing 4.0 on Amazon. Wicked, which used to be our lowest at 3.6 is now showing 4.4 stars on Amazon.  The highest rated book at 5 stars remains Have a Good Day for Jesus and John Wayne, followed by Illumination in the Flatwoods at 4.9 stars. In general I'm not sure Amazon Stars really matters, but this is what we have for data.

Who wrote what we are reading?

One of the things I was trying to do early on is "read the world", trying to get voices and contexts we might not pick up through our individual reading preferences.  We have not done all that well in that respect.  we are ethno- and cultural- centric in our club reading selections.  American, British and Canadian authors represent 85% of our reading selections.

 

What's our ratio of Fiction to Non-Fiction?

What categories (Fiction vs Non-Fiction) have we selected?  (I classified our one poetry selection as non-fiction as it appeared memoir-ish)

and what genres have we been reading?

Our Fiction genre data isn't very useful as the vast majority are unclassified.  Might be something we talk about at a future club meeting?  I'm not sure where to categorize much of these, so I've just left them blank.

Our Non-Fiction genre data is affected by some inconsistencies in categorization I know, especially since I put such things as River of Doubt in Journalism.  That should probably have been one of the Narrative Non-Fiction, perhaps other things I put in Journalism should be reclassified as well.

Now you know!  

We can use this information to insure we are reading broadly, and not focusing exclusively on a small subset of genres.

Looking forward to everyone's feedback.  I'll post the data once I remember how to do so! But hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

Hello Readers!

Here's some observations on our selection history:

How many books have we selected?

We have selected a total of 51 books, over a 5 year history.  2018 is a partial year, but I'm counting up through River of Doubt, scheduled for discussion in September

How many pages?

From club inception to mid-2017 we read 12,375 pages.   I'm still working data entry for the later selections and will update as I get information entered.

Our shortest book so far was A Christmas Carol (88 pages), followed by My Antonia (118 pages).  Our longest works selected were Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson (689 pages) much of which was not text, followed by Once and Future King (650 pages).

I'm still data entering page counts from about mid-2017 on, prior to that I have already entered.  I'll update the charts as I finish collecting the data but here's what I see right now: Our average selection has 375 pages, and we are drifting toward our average:  our bigger books are less big, our smaller books are less small.  Our average may be increasing slightly, its hard to tell whether the change in average is a trend or an anomaly in 2017.

Is what we are reading well-rated on Amazon?

At some points when I was putting things on the list to consider, Amazon Stars was one of the things I paid attention to.  Here's how our selections have stacked up on Amazon:

Our average Amazon Stars is increasing overall, and we seem to not be interested in books without at least 4-ish Amazon Stars.  Again, I haven't yet fetched the data for 2018, but I'll update when I have it.  The lowest rated book we have selected was Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, at 3.6 stars.  The highest rated book at 5 stars was Have a Good Day for Jesus and John Wayne.  In general I'm not sure Amazon Stars really matters, but this is what we have for data.

Who wrote what we are reading?

One of the things I was trying to do early on is "read the world", trying to get voices and contexts we might not pick up through our individual reading preferences.  We have not done well in that respect.  we are ethno- and cultural- centric in our club reading selections.  I still need to gather the data for 2018 but I seriously doubt it will change from what I see here.

What's our ratio of Fiction to Non-Fiction?

What categories (Fiction vs Non-Fiction) have we selected?  (I classified our one poetry selection as non-fiction as it appeared memoir-ish)

and what genres have we been reading?

We have been moving steadily away from Fable, Fantasy, and Historical fiction, and steadily toward Realistic Fiction, and moving heavily toward Non-Fiction in the last few years, from where we started.

Now you know!  

We can use this information to insure we are reading broadly, and not focusing exclusively on a small subset of genres.

Looking forward to everyone's feedback.  Here's the data that produced these charts.  Happy to discuss whether the genres make sense or not.

We met 26 July to discuss Donna Tartt's "The Little Friend".  In attendance were:

Darryl & Barbara
Dave & Mary
Erin
Carolene
Cheryl

Others were sorely missed!

Our current selection is How to Stop Time by Matt Haig, with a meeting 16 August.

Following that we will read River of Doubt by Candice Millard, meeting 13 Sept.

Discussion of A Christmas Carol

We met 15 December to discuss Dicken's A Christmas Carol, & O'Henry's Gift of the Magi

In attendance were
Dave & Mary
Darryl & Barbara
Jack
Alice
Carolyn
Catherine G.

Most of us had read A Christmas Carol at some point prior to this club selection.  A few of us who had read it in school did not re-read it for this meeting.

Several readers found the language difficult, partly due to idioms of British English, and partly due to the dated writing style. One example of a simile that the group did not understand from the text was "like a bad lobster in the cellar", referencing the pale glow of Marley's face as seen in the door knocker. Catherine was able to look up a reference for us during the club that explained it, but that's an excellent example of a phrase that did not readily convey meaning in modern American English.

Part of the discussion was the role of food and drink in the story, and the amount of text dedicated to describing them.  We speculated that food distribution and availability may have influenced it's importance in this text written in 1843.  Water purification would not have been well understood at this time, so beverages that are brewed or steeped might have been the norm for beverages as standing water sources may have been unsafe to drink.

Darryl brought his copy of the text, which had some discussion questions we used for the meeting. 

Overall most seemed to find A Christmas Carol to be an enjoyable read, if somewhat challenging language.

The Gift of the Magi was highly thought of by a couple of members, but less well liked by others. In general, the women in our group seemed to enjoy it more than the men. One member reported it was not at all the story he was expecting, as it is focused more on sacrifice and giving, rather than greed as he expected.

Our next selection is Frank Herbert's The White Plague (meeting 16 January), followed by A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny.

There are new entries on the What's Next list, so be sure to check them out. If you have a suggestion to add to the list, please email it to me.

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State of the Club

We discussed the current state of the book club, and those in attendance seemed happy with how it was going, though we acknowledge we have lost quite a few members. Some have moved away, others have changes in personal circumstance. As far as we know, no one has "rage quit" on us!

The Reading Selection Process

One member proposed a change to the club selection process, wherein members would submit recommendations that would be drawn at random rather than voting on a list of candidates. In general we seem to feel the democratic selection process, with the discussion (and negotiation to a certain extent) works for us, but this raises the possibility that we are suffering from tyranny of the masses, if some members don't feel their suggestions are given fair consideration.

We had decided a while back not to track who made what suggestions, as we felt knowing who made the suggestion might be biasing the selection process, but in this smaller group it is usually pretty obvious who made what suggestion. I will be considering how best to address these concerns about the fairness of the selection process.

The Suggestions List

Since we are beginning year 4 (four years!!) we discussed what kinds of selections we would like to be reading during 2017. Several members expressed appreciation for the biography, history, and memoir selections we have read, and wanted to insure those types of works remain available on the list. One member was interested in seeing greater representation of "classics" (though what was meant by classics was vague) on the list, rather than the concentration of fiction works represented in 2016.

One member expressed she would generally not read biographies, though would consider something about Nickola Tesla.

I will try to be more thoughtful about things I put on the list, and try to insure a range of genres is represented on the list.

One member once commented that she felt the books should be better vetted by the moderator before they are added to the list. I would not want to pre-read every (or, really, any) candidate work, as that would detract from my pleasure in the shared reading experience, but I recognize we have had some duds make it onto our agenda, so perhaps a deeper vetting is in fact necessary.

If folks have feedback to share, or thoughts about what they would like to see or experience in the club during 2017, please let me know!

Discussion of Girl on a Train

We met on Nov 10 to discuss Girl on a Train.

In attendance were:
Dave & Mary
Darryl & Barbara
Alice
Jack
Suzanne
Katherine G.

And two new members:
Nicole
Carolyn

Welcome new  members!

Most of us really enjoyed this novel, and found the ending surprising.  One member guessed early on who committed the murder, others had different theories.

The writing was felt to be quite good.  Some of the men found it somewhat "soapy" e.g. like a soap opera.

Of those of us who had seen the movie, we felt the book was far better than the movie.

Our next meeting will be Dec 15, to discuss Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" and O'Henry's "Gift of the Magi".  Both texts are very short, and are both free on Amazon and other ebook sources.

Updates

Upcoming book club meetings:

Oct 13th: Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon
Nov 10th: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Dec 15th: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

My new favorite word, found in Blue Highways, is "meretricious", moving "defenestration" down to number 2 on my favorite words list.

Several readers have reported they already finished Blue Highways, and a few readers report they are reading it but are struggling with the slow pace of the book.  I'm about 15 chapters in, so really still near the beginning.

I can't wait to hear what everyone thought of it!

Spill Simmer Falter Wither

We met to discuss Spill Simmer Falter Wither on 7 July.

In attendance were:

Dave & Mary
Jack
Darryl & Barbara
Suzanne

Overall we found this book a very interesting read.  Among the points made:

The writing itself was generally felt to be superb.  The story line was interesting and held our readers attention very well.  Some finished the book very quickly, in a couple of days.

Some comparisons to The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Night Time were made, though there was disagreement about whether any of the suggested similarities hold up under scrutiny.

Some of our group conjectured the main character in this novel was autistic or perhaps suffers from Asperger's syndrome, accounting for some aspects of his social awkwardness.  Others thought his difficulties stemmed perhaps from the way he was raised, and blamed the father for isolating him.  One line of reasoning was that his command of language seemed quite strong, he was a reader, had a broad knowledge of plants and animals.  On the other hand, he did not seem competent with regard to operating or maintaining his vehicle.

Some discussion focused on what seemed an absurd amount of time he was able to drive about in a deeply rural setting, in the modern era.  One hypothesis is that the novel is not set in "the modern era" but rather in some earlier time.  One point made is that we, as a group, have very little awareness of the available rural landscape outside our immediate United States locations, so its hard to be reliably certain the time-frame was not plausible.

Some side discussions occurred regarding the incident where he left the dog on the side of the road and drove away.  Both mothers present in the group said they had, in fact, put a child out of a car and threatened to leave them (note: neither actually did leave them!), when the child was non-compliant or combative.  Both reported this approach seemed to resolve the immediate behavior issue, but that they felt guilty about it, or questioned whether that was the "right thing for a good parent to have done".

Several readers mentioned they were still ambiguous about what happened to the main character at the end of the novel. Most readers agreed there were many surprising reveals in the last section of the book.

There was some discussion of the role of rage in the main character, and the extent to which some of his actions were fueled by anger or rage.  Some discussion focused on his apparent difficulties initiating action outside his habitual day-to-day activities.

Overall this novel was very well received among our group.

Our next select is Neil Peart's Ghost Rider, with the meeting planned for 11 August.

That will be followed by
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, meeting 1 Sept
The Satanic Verses by Salmon Rushdie, meeting 20 Oct
The Vegetarian by , meeting 17 November.

We are seeking a holiday-themed selection for the December timeframe, so please consider making suggestions in this area.  Last year during the holidays we read (and enjoyed!) L Frank Baum's "Life and Adventures of Santa Clause".

Discussion of Hard Boiled Wonderland

We met 17 March to discuss Hard Boiled Wonderland. In attendance were: Dave & Mary Darryl & Barbara Jack Katherine Tina Barbara brought a delightful show-and-tell for us, some animal skulls from her collection. Katherine did our poetry reading, she selected a short-form poem from among those she has written. About half the members in attendance completed this novel. Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels don't seem to fit well into the interests of our readership. This Magical Realism style novel reads more like Sci-Fi. Those who finished it enjoyed it, and those who didnt finish found the shifting of scenes between the two environments to be grating. The novel was generally acknowledged to be well written, the translator and editors did a wonderful job as well. We discussed the symbolism of some elements in the book including the skulls, and the shadow. We selected Katherine Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale" as our next read, and will follow that one with "Midnight's Lair" by Richard Laymon. We talked about tackling Plato's Republic in small, digestable pieces over the course of a year, rather than having to tackle it in one month. We will discuss whether we want to do that next meeting.

Discussion of Wicked

We met 25 February to discuss Wicked. In attendance were: Dave & Mary Jack & Shelia Darryl & Barbara Katherine Alice I may need to collaborate with others regarding the discussion... I dont recall much about it at this late date. We selected Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as our next read.

Discussion of Rebel Yell

We met and discussed Rebel Yell on January 21st In attendance were: Dave & Mary Jack & Shelia Darryl & Barbara Suzanne As I recall, the completion rate was pretty high for this one. Folks found it interesting if I recall correctly. Might need some collaboration on this one as well.

Rebel Yell

Happy New Year, Readers!

How are folks doing on Rebel Yell? I've heard from one member who finished the book and really enjoyed it.  Others seem to be holding off, I know several have not started this book.

Get to reading!

Jack Says...

I read a couple of negative reviews on the book which doubted that the writer had done proper research.

I bought the kindle version of the book and started reading. One instance that the reviewer mentioned was about John Brown and saying that the book stated that he was executed in 1861. No. I got to that point of the book and it has the correct time period of John Browns execution and it does later mention that Jackson wrote a letter in 1861 about John Browns execution. Perhaps the reviewer was confused. Another point that the reviewer said was inaccurate was that Major General Robert E. Lee, a ranking officer, gave Jackson his first command at Harper's Ferry. His claim is that Lee was not a major general or ranking officer at that time. So I did the research and YES Robert E. Lee was appointed April 18th as a Major General, a ranking officer and he gave the orders to Jackson on the 26th of April.

So the book is right and the reviewer wrong. One of those cases where you don't believe the reviews.

Discussion of The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause

We met December 3rd to discuss L Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause.

In attendance were:

Dave
Mary
Darryl
Barbara
Jack
Shelia

 This book was a short quick read. This one was chosen for it's holiday theme, and because those of us associated with schools are very busy at this time of year and we needed something light and fast. 

The discussion was entertaining and lively. Unfortunately I posted this quite late and backdated it (!!) so I'm afraid I don't remember much of the discussion.

Our next book was chosen at this meeting, it will be S. C. Gwynne's "Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson". We will meet to discuss that book January 21st.

 We also chose the next book, Gregory McGuire's Wicked, which we will discuss Feb 25th.

Discussion of The Book Thief

We met Thursday to discuss The Book Thief.

In attendance were:

Dave
Mary
Darryl
Barbara
Jack
Shelia

Most of us completed the book, and everyone who completed the book enjoyed the read. We set aside 6 weeks for this read as the page count was over 600 pages, but the book is a very fast read. Mary and Dave both completed it within a few days.

The discussion was a little light on this book. There are publisher book club questions, and we did consider a couple of those, but the discussion never really took off.

We spent quite a bit of discussion time on what we want to read after L Frank Baum's "The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause". We seemed to collectively settle on history or biography, but there isn't anything on the current list that appeals. It seemed figures from the american revolution held the most appeal, but several other suggestions were offered including a biography of Custer.

Dave will put four new entries on the list that are biographies or histories, and others should send emails or comment below, with suggested history or biography books they are interested in for December into January.

Our next meeting is scheduled for 3 December, to discuss L Frank Baum's "The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause".

Discussion of Master and Margarita

We met and discussed Bulgakov's Master and Margarita 24 Sept. In attendance were Dave & Mary Darryl & Barbara Jack & Sheliah Alice This selection was not well read by our group, with only 1 person completing it. We previously selected The Book Thief, and will meet for that discussion November 12th. Our next selection after that is L Frank Baum's "The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause". We plan to meet 3 December for that discussion.

Discussion of The Anansi Boys

We met on the 27th of August to discuss The Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. In attendance were: Darryl and Barbara Jack and (Virtual) Shelia Alice Mary and Dave There was some discussion of suspension of disbelieve required to accept the range of odd things that happen in the book. We also talked about the relationship between Fat Charlie and his fiance, compared to the characters at the beginning of Neverworld, where a similar relationship dynamic appears to be going on between the main character and his fiance. There was no consensus on whether Spider and Charlie were "brothers", were actually the same person, or in exactly what way they were related to one another. A point was made about the uni-dimensionality of many of the characters, and what that does to the story. There was some discussion of what race folks assumed Fat Charlie and other characters in the novel were. Gaiman is not explicit about the race of the characters. Some of our readers assumed they were white, while others assumed they were black, with various points made on either side of the discussion. Our next selection, Master and Margarita, fails on one key point of the bookclub: it is not available on Kindle. The group chose to keep the selection as most of us already had in hand, or on order, print copies of it anyway. Some who read mostly on Kindle agreed they would simply order the print book from amazon or pick it up in a used book store.' We will meet on the 24th of September to discuss The Master and Margarita Several members who moved out of town this year have indicated interest in still participating in the club, perhaps via Skype or teleconference. I'm working on a solution that will allow those who cant be physically present, to still be able to participate, so more on that shortly. Our choice for October is The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. Mary suggests a movie night following this read, to watch the movie.

The Anansi Boys

Hello Readers,

Hopefully everyone is finding this selection entertaining.

Our meeting is set for Thursday, 27 August, at 7PM.

From those who have finished the work, I hear positive things.  Looking forward to the discussion.

For discussion, this list of questions may be useful to consider.

An interview with David McCullough on The Wright Brothers

We are in our second week of The Wright Brothers. Hopefully everyone is on target to reach somewhere near page 200 by this coming Thursday, 2 July!

Our next meeting is set for 16 July.

Darryl sends this link for everyone's edification:

Interview with Wright Brothers author