I agree with Ophelia in that nothing is really too mature for this community. We don't have children as members and there are great books out there with very mature themes.

The Lord of the Rings idea is the most exciting to me, but based on my meager participation in past discussions I don't want to sway the vote too much. Whatever book we choose we should do so VERY soon. And then it would be wonderful if members would help spread the word all over the web. Any site you visit you could leave a little message about the upcoming fiction book discussion - and include a link to BookTalk.org. Would you guys be willing to help in that fashion?

I've picked up Lolita repeatedly through the years, but I'd really like to have some external motivation to read it.

I'm fairly new to this forum and I don't want to sway the selection process either since I'm not entirely sure I'll participate at this point. It sounds interesting, to be sure, but I find that my reading time is already limited. Regarding the Lord of the Rings, that's quite a mammoth undertaking. Would you divide the discussion into one book at a time? Over how long a period of time would the discussion go?

Thanks in advance for the info.

Geo wrote:

Regarding the Lord of the Rings, that's quite a mammoth undertaking. Would you divide the discussion into one book at a time? Over how long a period of time would the discussion go?

I'm a specialist in mammoth books.
Most people prefer short books but I keep suggesting them because that's what I read and I think I've already suggested every short book I know-- this is to say that during the time I've been at BT we've never discussed a long book. If Lord of the Rings was chosen I imagine that we would read the books in chronological order, and plan for a two-month period.

I'll recap my choices here:

1- Lolita.

2- Lord of the Rings.

Nouveaulingua: welcome to Booktalk!

Would you like to tell us a little about yourself by writing an introduction in the Introduction threads?

Middlemarch by George Eliot

http://www.amazon.com/Middlemarch-Oxfor ... 222&sr=1-5

I'd again second Saffron's nomination of The things They Carried. This is not only because it sits on my bookshelf unread. It is recognized, I believe, as the best fiction to emerge about the Vietnam War.

DWill

I've enjoy a couple of Isabel Allende's books, but that was over a decade ago.

Another possibility is Neal Stephenson's Anathem:

[quote]In this follow-up to his historical Baroque Cycle trilogy, which fictionalized the early-18th century scientific revolution, Stephenson (Cryptonomicon) conjures a far-future Earth-like planet, Arbre, where scientists, philosophers and mathematicians

I've now looked through all of the suggestions in this thread and this is what I see. I'm only commenting on books that have more than one person interested.

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Saffron, Dwill and Baby Blues all like "The Things They Carried"

Ophelia and Grim like "Lord of the Rings."

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Nouveau Lingua, Devi, Ophelia and Grim all like "Lolita." But Only Opehlia and Grim are actually likely to participate. Nouveau has 1 total post, Devi has 2 and Raving Lunatic has 4. From experience at least 2 of these people will never even return to BookTalk.org and 1 will come back but not actually participate in the discussion. I could be wrong, but this is how it always has been over the years. So only Ophelia and Grim are real votes. And in the last fiction discussion Ophelia stopped posting when nobody else showed an interest in posting, so I'd give Lolita a really low score right now. The 3 members that are mentioned above as having less than 4 posts each can demonstrate their interest in this book by making a follow-up post or two right here in this thread.

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In a seperate thread below this suggestion thread Yuvie suggested "Orlando," by Virginia Woolf, and it looks like quite a few members supported this nomination. Ashleigh, Dwill, Saffrom and Penelope. And maybe Ophelia...not sure.

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So, based on all that has been posted and discussed let's go with the following....

Orlando - October & November
The Things They Carried - November & December

If a few more people express an interest in Lolita we can do that book soon too.