BookTalk.org

As the forum description explains we have pulled this forum out of our Archives for Round 2. A decade ago way back in September and October of 2002 we discussed "Guns, Germs & Steel" as a community. We were a brand new community in 2002. Now that we're more established I'm hoping we can give this book another stab and maybe even invite Jared Diamond for either a live chat or email interview.

This new discussion period will be November and December of 2011. If enough people join the discussion we can extend it into 2012.

Would one of you like to take the helm as discussion leader?

There's nothing like an incentive to keep one on track, so I'll volunteer to lead the discussion. I think if anybody else wants also to consider him- or herself a discussion leader, then why not? We're very democratic here.

Chris, I suggest not posting all the chapters right off the bat, but just the intro on Yali and the first main section of the book, "From Eden to Cajamarca." We can tackle this long book as four shorter ones.

I hope Robert Tulip will participate. He has a lot of experience in New Guinea. Diamond refers to his own New Guinea experience several times in the book.

Could we have an idea of the readiness of people to start discussion? Who is on board? I suggest starting with the introduction and any other bits about the book or Diamond that people find interesting. Then we can take time to read the first section and have a discussion when people are finished. That would kind of imitate how the social, "real world" book groups work.

You have me thinking now...and that can be dangerous.

There are already dozens of threads in this forum. Most of those members no longer are even active here so we probably don't want those threads being brought back to life. I think I'm going to lock all the old threads. They'll remain there for reference, but we don't need current members making comments to the inactive members that posted in those older threads. Chaos will ensue and the new posts will never get responses. So all will be locked right now. Whenever this forum gets tucked back in the archives (many months from now) we will unlock all the older threads again.

Oh, and thanks for volunteering to lead this one, DWill. As you can see your name is yet again up in lights.

Chris OConnor wrote:Oh, and thanks for volunteering to lead this one, DWill. As you can see your name is yet again up in lights.

If this were FaceBook I'd click the "like" button - hey, maybe you should add a "like" button along with the "thank" button.

DWill wrote:
Chris, I suggest not posting all the chapters right off the bat, but just the intro on Yali and the first main section of the book, "From Eden to Cajamarca." We can tackle this long book as four shorter ones.

I'm just finishing up chap 1 and I think your suggestion to treat this book as 4 shorter ones is a smashingly good idea. It even makes sense based on what Diamond writes in his intro to the book. What I am wondering is if we - any of us- are going to watch and discuss the National Geo version. If so, should we have another thread just for the video? I plan to start watching on Sunday and am reading and ready to get this show going.