Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Book club timing decisions!

Hi all! So nice to be with you today, a beautiful sunny day here in WNY. I'm in a good mood, and all excited about book stuff for the summer. I hope that you are too!

I'm finishing up a romantic suspense series right now, by one of my favorite authors who lives in and sets all of her books in Montana, B.J. Daniels. So there is always a refreshing western theme to all of her books, which is very exotic for this northeastern gal. I'm really enjoying the last book in the current series.

I also was able to procure our summer non-fiction read, Church of Spies, as an ebook from my public library, though this good fortune is not destined to last. The lending period for ebooks is *1 week*, which, I'm sorry, is TOO SHORT. I can't finish a 300 page book in a week! I checked it out so that I could explore it this week, and then I'll decide what to do. I'll either get on the waiting list to check it out again, or if that is too long, I'll buy it.

I'm sure though that many of you are in the same dilemma. If you're getting the book from your public library in print, the lending period is most likely longer, but still somewhat restricted given that it just came out last year. I know that at my library, there is a waiting list for the print copies. So that will factor into our decision on how to structure our read-along.

I took a look at the Table of Contents, and you can too from the Amazon preview of the hardcover edition, if you like. I mentioned before that it has 26 chapters, plus a short prologue and epilogue. We mentioned designating a chunk to read for the end of May, and then seeing how it goes before projecting how we'll divide up the rest of the book. I think that this is a great idea.

So now to designate that first chunk. :) I looked at the page numbers in the Table of Contents, and thought to myself:

"Oh, we could read maybe the first 9 chapters as a start, that's only 100 pages!"

#hopespringseternal

Well.

Last night I embarked on the book on my cute little Kindle Paperwhite, Francis, and he immediately zoomed to my aid to let me know how long he thought it would take me (based upon my frequency in turning pages in other books) to read chapter 1.

36 minutes. :0

That's a lot longer than I thought. Last night before I fell asleep, I read about 11 Kindle pages, down to about 28 or so minutes remaining in the chapter. According to Francis, I'm on page 11 of 346 pages, based upon my font size and Kindle screen size.

Thus, my thought is that we should start with 5 chapters. Does this sound good? And we'll shoot for the last Wednesday in May, which is May 25th. That's 3 weeks away. Do you like the sound of that?

Please do let me know your thoughts. We're in this together, and I want it to be a good reading experience! We can "meet" more frequently than once per month and divide the book up into smaller chapter segments once we get going too, if everyone likes that idea. Every two to three weeks. Chime in peeps!

I also have fiction news just waiting to break, so stay tuned if that is your preferred genre. There will be a summer program for you as well! :0 Also, tomorrow being the feast of the Ascension, which, in my diocese is a holy day of obligation, I'm postponing Tea Time til Friday. I'm going to Mass in the morning at Henry's school, which will be lovely, but throws my day off a bit. Friday will be easier this week. Chat with you then, and in the comments to this post!

2 comments:

  1. 5 chapters by May 25th sounds good for the first time! I should have time to actually start it tonight. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sam, thanks for chiming in! Keep me posted of your progress. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

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