Book Club Forum

In lieu of a Waiting on Wednesday post, I wanted to let you guys know about a forum I am starting up. After reading many bloggers' resolutions posts to both read more of their TBR piles as well as trying to connect more with fellow bloggers, I decided to start up a book club forum. Initially, I was going to open it to only a small number to see how things go but I am admittedly impatient and decided to just open it now to anyone interested but please make sure you are willing to commit the time to this.

There is a chat on the site where we can all just get together and, obviously, chat, as well as have just get to know each other and talk about anything and everything.

At this time, the actual board discussions will be limited to the week's books rather than a free for all. The main reason for this: everyone on the site will know which books to push up on their lists and in theory, everyone participating will have read the books. Otherwise, we are talking about different books at different times and face it- it would totally suck to read a book, be super excited to talk about it only to find out there's a huge thread already devoted to it to try and wade through and maybe even find out its kind of died out.

Also, there is always the issue of ARCs. I don't want to set something up where the select few who receive ARCs have free range to discuss them when others can't even get them at the stores yet. With all that in mind, I am going book club style on this and am going to very much limit how much other book talk there is.

Talking about current reads in general terms is fine- spoilers, in depth discussion, etc- not so much except for the week's picks.

I am going to start out with one book but build up to three per week. You don't have to read them all (unless you later sign up to be one of my moderators should things expand that far and I need it but that's for another time) but please do commit yourself to reading at least 1 a week. This way, there will be enough people to have great discussions on these books. I will set the schedule for the first several weeks but after that, I will be very open to ideas on what the members want to show up. The beginning week of each month is when I will post the schedule for the next month so everyone has plenty of time to get a hold of the books.

My categories:

1. 2010 Debut Authors- Each week, one of the books will be a 2010 debut author title. This helps promote them as well as helps many of us complete are debut author challenge.

2. 2009 or 2010 Release- If its being released this year but isn't a debut author, it fits here. Anything released in 2009 will also go here.

3. Miscellaneous- Anything that isn't the above will go here, along with the occasional adult titles though this entire board will be primarily YA. 2009 releases can also fall into this category, especially the ones from earlier in 2009 but this also helps pull those books that might have been sitting in our TBR piles awhile.

I am still in the working stages of this but have the basic forum set up and am accepting members. The first discussion is set to open Jan 24 and if you have topics related to the book you want to talk about, send me a message in advance. I also hope to incorporate authors into this once things are up and running, particularly in the week's their titles are spotlighted (but that, too, is for another time).

If you are interested, you can head on over to the forum and check it out. Yes, the name is tied to this one since I am hosting it and I encourage everyone to use the same alias' they use for their blogging adventures. I want everyone to just have fun with this- connect to other bloggers, have a place to talk about set books, and just expand your blogging network.

Click here to check it out and sign up!

The first scheduled book is Break by Hannah Moskowitz. One, I just finished it and loved it and two, it is a very quick read so even though who join closer to the date should be able to get a hold of it and have it read.