Book Club
The poll for June's Book Club Read has been closed. The community will be reading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. If you are interested in participating in the book club, please remember that the community post will be made on June 25th. Do not post separate reviews of the book to the community. Please wait to make your comments on the book club read in the community post.

Community Administration
I have taken writerlibrarian up on her wonderful offer to help with the management of the book club and the community. As many of you know, I just finished my last semester of law school, and I am currently studying for the bar (not in California :D, but in another state with a reputation of having a difficult bar). Mr. jennem and I will also be relocating in July (before the bar) because of a job opportunity offered to me, and we go on our honeymoon immediately after the bar (we literally fly out the day after the bar exam). Basically, I'm really busy. :D writerlibrarian will be in charge of running the book club in July and August. She gets busy in September and October, so I'll take the reigns in those months, and then we're just going to play it by ear. She has also been elevated to the status of "mod." So far we haven't had any problems with the "don't be an asshole" rule, but she is empowered to police the bad behavior of members when they forget how to play nicely with one another. From her lips to your ears.

Interesting Article
NPR has a bunch of book recommendations on its Summer Books 2009 website. Check it out! :D It looks neat.

Alright! Sorry I have been "afk" for the last few weeks. Graduation and BarBri have kept me hopping! Below is the poll for the June Book Club. Please select three books* that you would like to read. The book with the most votes will be the June Book Club Read. Voting opens as soon as this poll is posted and closes on Tuesday, May 26 @ 9 P.M. CST.

The "book club post" will be posted on June 25th. All comments about the selected book will be welcome in that post. Reviews of the book should not be posted to the community.

This month, the book selection will be at random based on the poll results. I'm going to take the suggestions of your fellow readers and institute a "genre" or "theme" based policy for the next few months. If that goes well, then that's how we'll do the book selection for the club. Books that are not selected this month will be rotated into the poll for that specific theme/genre when it comes up. In early June, I will select the theme/genre for July's book club (suggestions via PM or comment are welcome), I'll then ask for book suggestions related to that theme/genre and post a poll for book selection.

As always, comments are welcome. I'm new to all of this. If some of you have experience and think there's a "better way," I'm all ears. Even if you don't have experience, if you can think of a better way, I'm happy to listen to your suggestions. I want the book club (and this community) to be successful! :D

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*If you select more than three books, you should go back to the post and click on "change your vote." Any voter that has selected more than three books when the poll is closed will have all of their votes disqualified.

Hello! Welcome to the community! I'm very excited about the community and its potential for great conversations about all bookish things!

Ideally, I would like to increase the amount of posting to this community to at least one post a day. So, if you are currently reading a book, or if you have just finished reading a book, please consider making a post to the community! Unfortunately, despite my vast amounts of energy, I am currently in Finals-'O-Doom-Mode. For those of you that don't know me, I'm jennem on both Dreamwidth & Livejournal (jennem). I'm also a 3L (third year law student) at a Top 15 law school which means that I am smack-dab in the middle of my last round of Finals 'O Doom. And, since I'm actually interested in graduating in a few weeks, most of my time is going to be spent studying for the Finals 'O Doom instead of reading books that are vastly more entertaining than casebooks.

After I finish Finals 'O Doom, I go straight into BarBri and studying for the bar. The bar is in late July, and after that I'm off on the honeymoon that Mr. jennem and I postponed at the beginning of the year. I'll be able to devote myself to developing this community (hosting monthly book clubs and other types of admin-run activities) by mid-August, and since my Big!Law firm decided to push back start dates until Nov., I'm betting that you'll eventually get tired of my posts! :D In the mean time, please feel free to post your book recommendations, reviews, or requests for recommendations/information.

If you have any questions or comments about the community, please feel free to make them to this post or the FAQ-post. (If I don't respond, its not because of something you've said—its because I'm busy being neurotic until July 31!) I look forward to getting to know all of you, and I look forward to all of your reviews and recommendations!

SCOPE & TOPIC OF THE COMMUNITY:

Books! Other than that, anything goes. Young adult, chick-lit, non-fiction, biographies, true crime, fantasy, and the classics are all welcome. I want people to post about what they read. I read the literary classics, but I also read a ton of chick-lit, young adult, and fantasy books. I want to know what you like and what you dislike. I want to know what chick-lit books have an interesting plot, and I want to know which ones I should avoid because they author can't write to save his or her life.

Book recommendations, book reviews, and book critiques are all welcome. If someone recommends a book that you absolutely hated, let us know. People like different things. Different strokes for different folks. No two people are ever going to agree on everything, and dissenting opinions are more than welcome—just don't be an asshat. If you happen to be the person that gets dissent, remember. It’s not personal. The world is not ending because someone on Dreamwidth didn't like a book. Act accordingly.

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The FAQ and the Suggested Reading List will be linked in the profile of the community.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Bueller?