The Classical Book Club Discussion
The lowdown on how the discussion will work for the first edition of the Classical Book Club.
Hello all!
I hope everyone’s having a great week so far.
How is the reading going? I know from conversations with a few of you that many are finished or nearly finished, or at least working through it well. If you do have any issues or are finding anything difficult, please feel free to send me a message on Substack and I can help out!
I wanted to share a quick post today to explain how the discussion part of the book club is going to work. It’s fairly simple, I just wanted to get this out in advance and give people who are taking part plenty of time to read it.
It’s also to give people time to book space in their diary if they want to be online when it starts! I’ll notify you via email when it kicks off, so you won’t be in danger of missing out or forgetting as long as you keep notifications and posts from this Substack turned ON!
When will it take place?
I’m going to kick the discussions off in the Substack chat on Saturday 2nd November. This will start at 6pm GMT/2pm ET.
The discussion will last over the course of the weekend, so if you can’t make it on the dot, don’t worry - there’ll be plenty of chance to get your thoughts out and chat with others. You can come and go in the online space whenever you’d like, though I expect it will be busiest during the first few hours.
Technically, it’ll stay open beyond the weekend too, so you’re free to carry on discussing afterwards, it’s just that from Monday 4th November my focus will turn towards the next book!
How will it work?
In the Substack chat function, I’ll create various new threads. For this first edition, I’m going to ask that you do not create new threads yourselves. This is to help keep conversations at least somewhat focused, as I’m conscious of avoiding dozens of different threads that make discussions hard to follow.
I haven’t determined exactly how many threads there will be just yet, but they will be focused on different elements of the book. It might be about the language, the structure, the story, the context - I'm yet to define exactly how it looks, but it will cover the key themes and points of the novel.
There will also be a specific ‘questions or comments’ thread for anything not covered in the discussion. Anyone will be able to reply to those throughout, so you’ll get the chance to ask or discuss anything that doesn’t come up elsewhere!
Within each thread, you are welcome to add a reply or reply via subthread to a specific person’s reply. It’s important to reply via a subthread if you wish to discuss a specific point, because else the feed becomes too cluttered.
You can find the ‘reply in a new subthread’ by clicking the three dots that appear when hovering over a comment, or by holding down the reply with your finger if using a phone or tablet.
Throughout the discussion, you are welcome to navigate back and forth across different threads, engage with whoever you like, and discuss the book as much as you want to. I’ll be online for a few hours at least on the day, so you can chat to me about it if nothing else!
I just ask that everyone be friendly and polite. I have absolutely no concern that we’ll have any issues in a book club discussion and everyone has been super welcoming already, I just wanted to add a quick disclaimer that of course abuse or insults will not be tolerated!
What do you need to do?
Not much! You just need to make sure you’ve read Frankenstein in advance. You don’t need to do any critical thinking about it, read any essays, discuss in advance on message boards - just read the book and come along.
You’re more than welcome to do more, of course, and I know some of you do enjoy exploring the novel more once finished. Your expertise is going to be much appreciated, because I’m sure I won’t be able to answer everything anyway!
There is a lot of critical thinking about the novel online as you’d expect, and I’ll share some interesting and thoughtful pieces with you in my post next week.
Will it work like this every month?
Potentially. I’m open to seeing how things go! And afterwards I’ll create a space for you to offer any feedback that you’d like or suggest improvements for how we might run it in future.
It might be that we decide to condense the discussion to a smaller period of time or that we might try a different day of the week. We might even just change how the discussions work altogether. I’m going to be open to suggestions either way!
This, of course, is new to me as well as many of you! There might be a little bit of trial and error until we find a formula that works.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about how it will work, give me a shout in the comments on this post.
I won’t be adjusting how the discussion runs for this month, but if anything here has confused you or if you feel as though I’ve missed something - please do let me know!
I’m hoping to run a bit more of a profile on Mary Shelley to have with you next week, and perhaps delve deeper into some of the context of the writing. I imagine that will be with you later next week, as I’ll likely use it as a reminder of the discussion taking place on the weekend that follows!
Looking forward to the first discussion and as always, I’ll speak to you again soon.
Take care.
I’m looking forward to this!