I hear you, but it's a whole lot of book to cover and it's already been a month since we started. I mean, at this rate, I'm going to have to return the book before we even touch part 5, which I think would be half way through October if we have a discussion every two weeks. I would strongly suggest that for the book club, we try to pick books that will: 1) spark good discussion of the book 2) spark good discussion of ideas and subjects that the book deals with 3) are manageable within reasonable time frames. I think that 1 and 2 are fairly well satisfied, but man oh man, this is taking a while to get through, no? Plus, there are clearly a lot of people starting classes right now and "huge novel" might not be the most appealing way to spend their free time . . . Anyway, two huge books in a row is probably about as much as our book club can handle, but as I'm out of the rotation after this book, I'll leave it up to the next person to decide.
Aw, come on! That's not what I meant by it! I'm just saying that with a book this length, suddenly it becomes a Commitment. I mean, three months man, that's the time frame we're dealing with. That's a quarter of a year. I honestly think that more people would participate if it was a book club, not a massive book club. I'm not saying that I think people would participate more if we were to choose lighter fare either; a whole lot of those books suggested were heavy, dense kinds of books because . . . I guess those are the kind of people interested in participating. The thing is we need to keep the pace up so that people stay involved. Too long in between and people forget.
I read your post on the other stuff you're supposed to be reading and it seems like you've got a heavy load. One of my worst semesters in school was when I decided to take a literary foundations course (classics) and a Brit. Lit course. One book a week for each class. If I had the opportunity to do things over, I would definitely not do that again.
I would love to be able to take courses like that, but most of my reading is on top of class because my college doesn't handle double majors very well. No room for interesting courses. I've been reading part two this afternoon and unfortunately it's much, much weirder than part one. Fuck.