Does anyone have the book already? I'm not seeing actual chapters in Flowers for Algernon. How should this book discussion be formatted?

We have done threads for every "X" number of pages before. Or maybe there are actually chapters and the preview I am seeing is misleading.

Any suggestions?

Oh, and we need a book discussion leader! Would you like to volunteer?

I have the book, 320 pages, no prologue or epilogue. The novel seems to be formatted as a journal. We could do 8 threads of 40 pages. The only problem I see is that 40th page may be in the middle of a journal entry.

Also, when people are reading on an eReader they could very well be on a different page than someone reading in paperback or hardcover.

Are there names of each journal entry?

I would like to lead this discussion. I have the book on kindle and have read the first eight out of seventeen journal entries. They would work well as a thread for each entry. I suggest the following threads, which use the same spelling as in the book, illustrating progress from moron to genius

progris riport 1 martch 3
progris riport 2 martch 4
3d progris riport
progris riport 4
progris riport 5 mar 6
progris riport 6th Mar 8
PROGRESS REPORT 7 MARCH 11
PROGRESS REPORT 8
PROGRESS REPORT 9
PROGRESS REPORT 10
PROGRESS REPORT 11
PROGRESS REPORT 12
PROGRESS REPORT 13
PROGRESS REPORT 14
PROGRESS REPORT 15
PROGRESS REPORT 16
PROGRESS REPORT 17

Flowers for Algernon is a wonderful and profound book, a story about ethics, intelligence, science and psychology. The theme is a medical experiment to transform a moron into a genius. It is written via the journal entries of Charlie, the subject of the experiment. Beginning with his selection for the experiment, the style involves the author projecting himself into Charlie’s mind, using the spelling and grammar and ability as a moron. Charlie is selected for the experiment because he is eager to learn and cooperative and wants to become intelligent like other people.

The ethical problem here is the use of untried medical methods on a human subject, where the risk is that unforeseen effects could produce harmful results. This is a moral issue going back to the Frankenstein experiment, where a mad genius is focused on the positive potential and disregards the dangers. This problem is a dilemma for science, since we cannot know the outcome of many experiments without conducting them. In cosmetic and drug trials this problem is addressed by testing products and methods on animals to ensure that any harm will be identified to decide whether the test is safe to conduct on humans, with detailed ethical protocols agreed by scientific committees.

Algernon is a white lab mouse who has been operated on to triple his intelligence. When the scientists get Charlie to try to do mazes Algernon beats him every time. At first.

Thanks Robert. I'm going to be reading the book and will try to get involved.

I'm not sure if a new thread for each is necessary, at least in the beginning they are quite short. We're not likely to get that much activity. If they're all numbered, you might want to just bunch a certain number together.

Thanks for volunteering, Robert!

Dexter, you're probably right. I'll create the threads and group the progress reports/journal entries together. From experience we will end up having threads with zero posts if we don't group them into larger threads.

Since you say they are shorter in the beginning of the book I'll probably do as follows. I'll use the actual report names as the thread subjects. Maybe. It seems important to include the book title in the thread too so there won't be enough room for title and all that info. So I'll probably name each thread as "Flowers for Algernon: Thread 1" and so on. Then, as the first post in each thread I'll give the progress reports.

Thread 1
progris riport 1 martch 3
progris riport 2 martch 4
3d progris riport

---

Thread 2
progris riport 4
progris riport 5 mar 6
progris riport 6th Mar 8

---

Thread 3
PROGRESS REPORT 7 MARCH 11
PROGRESS REPORT 8
PROGRESS REPORT 9

---

Thread 4
PROGRESS REPORT 10
PROGRESS REPORT 11

---

Thread 5
PROGRESS REPORT 12
PROGRESS REPORT 13

---

Thread 6
PROGRESS REPORT 14
PROGRESS REPORT 15

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Thread 7
PROGRESS REPORT 16
PROGRESS REPORT 17

OK, I got it. I see that I can use the book title and progress reports as the titles. I'll create the threads now.

Thank you Robert!