Agora Road book club

Would you join an Agoraroad (TM) book club?


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remember_summer_days

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Basically the tittle. I think there's plenty of very smart people in here and it would be awesome to read discussions on masterpieces like Jeff the Killer or Sonic Highschool.

On a more serious notes I think we could read anything really, from trashy sonichu to Ulysses, as long as we discuss it. As for what to read, we could leave suggestions and after we have enough suggestions we could vote on what book to read next. Then we would have to set a deadline for how much are we reading in a given time, of course people are busy so the deadlines would be generous... Or you could just miss the deadline and catchup whenever you want.

The idea for discussions would be to make a thread for that book and for example, say the goal is to read pages 1 to 100 in a week. Then people can make posts to discuss those 100 pages, and not anything more to avoid spoilers. I think the idea here is to make the discussions feel flexible and 'free' since there is not really a limit on how much you can discuss, only that you should avoid spoilers if the group is still reading up to a certain point.

Would you be interested? I'm trying to see how many people are interested to decide if it's worth organizing anything lol. If you got any thoughts or suggestions on the matter, just leave a comment!


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I think it's a great idea!
What kind of books did you have in mind? I think cyberpunk or internet-related stuff would be a good place to start, since most people here seem to be interested in those topics.
 
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remember_summer_days

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I think it's a great idea!
What kind of books did you have in mind? I think cyberpunk or internet-related stuff would be a good place to start, since most people here seem to be interested in those topics.
I was thinking more like literature stuff, but we'll read whatever people vote for
 
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I would be down for it. I usually have commitment issues when it comes to finishing books, but I think having a group of people and a schedule to read by would largely ease that issue. This is definitely a great idea, and I think if we can get a few people to get the ball rolling for the first few books we do, then I'm sure more people would join in for later books.
 

7Pebbles

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Basically the tittle. I think there's plenty of very smart people in here and it would be awesome to read discussions on masterpieces like Jeff the Killer or Sonic Highschool.

On a more serious notes I think we could read anything really, from trashy sonichu to Ulysses, as long as we discuss it. As for what to read, we could leave suggestions and after we have enough suggestions we could vote on what book to read next. Then we would have to set a deadline for how much are we reading in a given time, of course people are busy so the deadlines would be generous... Or you could just miss the deadline and catchup whenever you want.

The idea for discussions would be to make a thread for that book and for example, say the goal is to read pages 1 to 100 in a week. Then people can make posts to discuss those 100 pages, and not anything more to avoid spoilers. I think the idea here is to make the discussions feel flexible and 'free' since there is not really a limit on how much you can discuss, only that you should avoid spoilers if the group is still reading up to a certain point.

Would you be interested? I'm trying to see how many people are interested to decide if it's worth organizing anything lol. If you got any thoughts or suggestions on the matter, just leave a comment!
I'm a really big fan of 50's+ science fiction. I think it sheds a lot of light on how we've arrived at the current state of things today on the internet and the world as a whole. I think maybe we should try and start with something like 1984 and work our way through the years, hitting some highlights that everyone should read at least once and also picking up some short stories like Philip K Dick's the Second Variety and some of Harlan Ellison's short stories like IHNMAIMS (read at your own risk tho so maybe not). I like doing more short stories because that makes things more accessible to those with less time or patience. Eventually we'd reach the modern era and would branch out and read things relevant to today's world.
I'm cool if things don't happen exactly like this, because I know people will want to read other things as well, but this is my push to include some sci-fi. I have loads more suggestions for short stories, so ask me if anyone is interested.

As for logistics, I think we should try and keep it almost casual. We should set bounds of "read this much for next week's discussion" and then when the discussion time rolls around, we're discussing that part of the book. If you missed that bit, no worries, just catch up for next week or read spark notes. If you've already read the book, thats fine, just confine your discussion to that part of the book. This isn't a class so it should be pretty loose. People should be able to come and go depending on what they feel like reading.
 

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remember_summer_days

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I'm a really big fan of 50's+ science fiction. I think it sheds a lot of light on how we've arrived at the current state of things today on the internet and the world as a whole. I think maybe we should try and start with something like 1984 and work our way through the years, hitting some highlights that everyone should read at least once and also picking up some short stories like Philip K Dick's the Second Variety and some of Harlan Ellison's short stories like IHNMAIMS (read at your own risk tho so maybe not). I like doing more short stories because that makes things more accessible to those with less time or patience. Eventually we'd reach the modern era and would branch out and read things relevant to today's world.
I'm cool if things don't happen exactly like this, because I know people will want to read other things as well, but this is my push to include some sci-fi. I have loads more suggestions for short stories, so ask me if anyone is interested.

As for logistics, I think we should try and keep it almost casual. We should set bounds of "read this much for next week's discussion" and then when the discussion time rolls around, we're discussing that part of the book. If you missed that bit, no worries, just catch up for next week or read spark notes. If you've already read the book, thats fine, just confine your discussion to that part of the book. This isn't a class so it should be pretty loose. People should be able to come and go depending on what they feel like reading.
Yeap! That's exactly the idea. I had the idea to read our way through the /lit/ canon... But there are some pretty 'advanced' books in there. Though I shouldn't worry cause everyone in Agora are 160 IQ+ chads.
 
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remember_summer_days

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I think we already got enough people to start doing suggestions! So, just leave whatever you might want us to read and we'll do a votation on what we should read! Again, everything from fanfictions, light novels, non-fiction, and literature go. I'm even okay with comics or visual novels.

>Implying visual novels are art.

We could also just work our way through a canon, the /lit/ looks pretty good to me but we could use whatever else you guys want really. Here is /lit/s top 100 2020 novels for reference. I had the 2021 version saved somewhere but I'm too lazy to dig through my phone image gallery to find it lol.


(Link to the high rest image https://4chanlit.fandom.com/wiki//lit/_Top_100_Lists )
Top_novels_2002.jpg
 
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So, just leave whatever you might want us to read and we'll do a votation on what we should read!
I'm seconding @7Pebbles's recommendation of Phillip K. Dick. Any one of his novels would be a good place to start. I've read and enjoyed Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and would be up for either re-reading one of those or looking into one of his other works, like The Man in the High Castle or Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. PKD was a fascinating guy and by all accounts actually believed in all the esoteric stuff his books touch on.
I've got a whole bunch of medium-length novels, both sci-fi and "real literature," on my reading list that would work well for this kind of group, but I have no idea whether there's any mutual interest. I think book clubs work best if the book isn't too long or too short (short story collections would work, though), and I personally wouldn't be interested in reading any nonfiction because I'm currently working my way through a lengthy history book. Maybe the best idea would be to do the voting through a public strawpoll and see what books we all have in common.
 
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I'm even okay with comics or visual novels.
>Implying visual novels are art.
Really opening up pandora's box with that suggestion... If this goes on for long enough I'm sure the club will end up looking at some eventually.

Anyways, I like @7Pebbles idea of going through a lot of 1950s sci-fi, so I'm going to second 1984. Snow Crash and Neuromancer have been in my backlog, as well, so I think those wouldn't be such bad ideas, either. So I've got five I'd like to put into the voting list:

-1984 (George Orwell)
-Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)
-Neuromancer (William Gibson)
-The Castle (Franz Kafka)
-Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

I was also considering suggesting some of Nietzsche's works, but I think if the club goes down the philosophy route, we should start with Socrates and Plato so that everyone's on the same page.
 

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Really opening up pandora's box with that suggestion... If this goes on for long enough I'm sure the club will end up looking at some eventually.

Anyways, I like @7Pebbles idea of going through a lot of 1950s sci-fi, so I'm going to second 1984. Snow Crash and Neuromancer have been in my backlog, as well, so I think those wouldn't be such bad ideas, either. So I've got five I'd like to put into the voting list:

-1984 (George Orwell)
-Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)
-Neuromancer (William Gibson)
-The Castle (Franz Kafka)
-Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

I was also considering suggesting some of Nietzsche's works, but I think if the club goes down the philosophy route, we should start with Socrates and Plato so that everyone's on the same page.
seems like you've got a dystopia string going. i'd add We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and The Iron Heel by Jack London (arguably the inspiration for 1984, as Orwell discusses the book in All Art is Propaganda)
 
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Here's a list of suggestions pulled from my reading list, in no particular order and not counting the PKD books I mentioned above or anything else that's already been posted. They're all novels under 300 pages and I haven't read most of them.

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban
Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev
Circuits of the Wind: A Legend of the Net Age by Michael Stutz
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
The Snail on the Slope by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky
The Invention of Morel by Aldolfo Bioy Casares
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
Engine Summer by John Crowley
The Peregrine by J.A. Baker
Amygdalatropolis by B.R. Yeager
Falconer by John Cheever
The Golem by Gustav Meyrink
Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist
Peace by Gene Wolfe
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Great Sky River by Gregory Benford

It's a long list, but I figured it would be better to take a scattershot approach than to edit my suggestions down based on an assumption of what other people are interested in.
 
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It's great that there are a lot of suggestions... But it would be counterproductive to make a pol with like 20+ titles... So unless people specify like 'from this list these are my top 3' I'll just random pick from people's suggestions.

Or idk, I could make a poll with everything people suggested :NepWink:
 
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7Pebbles

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I'll dump my own suggestions. I've got a lot and I have mixed thoughts about a number of them in terms of suitability for our purposes so I'll add my thoughts as I list them:
- 1984 by George Orwell (novel)
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (novel)
- The Second Variety by Philip K Dick (short story)
- I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison (short, disturbingly bleak story. I have a lot of thoughts about it though. Maybe not the best for everyone but I recommend it anyway)
- How Interesting: A Tiny Man by Harlan Ellison (short story; can be found in "Can and Can'tankerous", a collection of Ellison's works.)
- "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison (never read it, always meant to.)
- There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury (short story)
- Dangerous Visions, an Anthology by Harlan Ellison (sounds interesting)
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman (novel; I just like this one)
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (novel)
- The Time Machine by HG Wells (short novel)
- The Invisible Man by HG Wells (short novel)
- The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (novel; not influential, just good.)

Edit: My Top 3: The Second Variety, How Interesting: A Tiny Man, Repent Harlequin(...)

I also wonder if there is anything worth reading about vaporwave or vaporwave-ish themes? I haven't done any research into it but I'm interested.
 

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