Welcome to The Preliminary Steemit Book Club Plan.
Based on the Comments in response to my IntroduceYourself post, it’s officially time to start the first Steemit Book Club.
And as agreed almost unanimously in the comments, we are going to kick it off with this literary monsterpiece:
Here’s how I’m thinking it will work.
Let me know your feedback in the Comments section below, and based on the discussion there, I will make any changes and then post: The Official Steemit Book Club Plan.
Question: How is this book club going to work?
Answer: We will have conference calls every week to discuss the book, as well as a simultaneous Steemit.chat. Afterward, a recording, summary, and the reading assignment for the following week will be posted on Steemit for anyone who missed it.
Question: When will these calls be?
Answer: Monday evenings at 6:30 pm PST/9:30 pm EST/2:30 am GMT/11:30 am (Tuesday) UTC. We will be using Freeconference, which offers international toll-free numbers in most countries as well as a web link to join the call.
Question: Who gets those Book Club Steem Dollars?
Answer: All Steem Dollars generated from weekly Book Club posts will be divided equally among book club members after finishing each book. In order to receive a share of the Steem Dollars, the book club member must:
- Stay in the book club until the completion of the book.
- Attend 75 percent of the calls or chats.
- Read the entire book.
Question: That’s pretty cool: So you get paid to read and incentivized to finish the book?
Answer: Is that a rhetorical question?
Question: What book are we starting with?
Answer: We are starting with the book ranked by the Modern Library as #1 on its list of the 100 best novels of all time. Another book by the same author holds the #3 spot:
However, Ulysses by James Joyce is no easy reading. Trying to just pick it up and read it on your own is like being thrown in the middle of the ocean without anything to float on. So most readers who pick it up toss it aside soon after. But with some guidance and orientation, the book becomes crystal clear, and opens up as a fantastic puzzle, adventure in reading, and community experience. It promises to lead to some great discussion and interaction.
Question: Where can I find the book?
Answer: I’d recommend getting the Gabler edition of Ulysses. Besides being my favorite, it has line numbers in the margins so we can all communicate clearly and be “on the same page”: https://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-original-James-Joyce-ebook/dp/B017WQ5WTI/
If you don’t want to pay for the Gabler edition or can’t find it in your country, you can find an earlier edition of Ulysses for free via Project Gutenberg: https://archive.org/stream/ulysses04300gut/ulyss12.txt
And free on the Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-James-Joyce-ebook/dp/B002RKT6QK#nav-subnav
Or in any format you prefer: http://manybooks.net/titles/joycejametext03ulyss12.html
Question: When do we start?
Answer: Ideally, Monday, September 5th allows everyone to get the book, but it’s also Labor Day in the U.S., so if anyone prefers, we can start on Monday, September 12th instead.
Question: Is there any other way I should prepare to read Ulysses?
Answer: You don’t need to. Everything will be explained. But if you want to get a head start, read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (which is a prequel of sorts). And if you’re really eager, read the stories in Dubliners (some of the characters pop up in Ulysses). And maybe re-acquaint yourself with The Odyssey, which Ulysses parallels in the modern day.
Question: Anything else I can do to prepare?
Answer: You can pick up an annotated guide to the work. And keep this image handy. It’s your “map” to the book:
Question: Is there anything I can do?
Answer: If you are a Joyce scholar or a professor who teaches the book—or if you know of one—it would be great to have an expert guest on some of the calls. Let me know in the Comments below. Would be amazing.
Question: What’s the reading assignment for the first call?
Answer: We will read the first pages together as a group on the call, and afterward there will be weekly reading assignments.
Question: What’s the next book going to be?
Answer: It could be any book worthy of discussion. Infinite Jest was recommended in the Comments section of the Introduce Yourself thread, and I like the idea of reading books together that we might not otherwise finish on our own. But I’m open to any great work. The remaining members will decide together in the last weeks of the Ulysses calls.
Question: Anything else I should know?
Answer: Yes. I’m going to invite my entire Inner Circle mailing list (www.neilstrauss.com) to join Steemit and be part of the Book Club. There are a lot of people on that list. I hope some of them will become great additions to the Steemit community.
Special thanks to the-alien for helping to make this happen.