Star Trek Reads discussion

I have a suggestion designed to invigorate discussion of Star Trek books. Wikipedia has a list of Star Trek books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
I did not count all of these books, but I estimate there might be 800.

Now let's say we go to a used book store, see a Star Trek novel, pick it up, start to read it, get into it, want to share the fun of the read.... But then find there's no one to talk to about it. Most of our friends have other interests or concerns. They probably think we're a bit strange to still be reading books about this old series. So we come here to Good Reads, pull reviews of the book up, read other people's takes, which is cool. But it's still limited. There's no opportunity for discussion, no way to open a dialog about the book.

We can come to this Trek discussion group, and here we can discuss subjects Trek in general. We can even discuss specific Trek books that happen to be the read of the month. But what about this cool 1997 Trek book we pick up at the flea market last weekend and start reading? How can we engage in a dialog with each other about this book?

I think this group has the potential to fill the gap and meet this need! Here's my proposal. We take that Wikipedia list and create a discussion topic for each individual title. Yes, I know, that's about 800 discussion topics. But this Rome does not have to be built in a day. The topics can be started as someone reads a book and becomes interested about generating a discussion. The book titles can be organized hierarchically in order to be easily found. I propose they be organized in their own section under a general heading, maybe "Specific Book Discussions" by original publication year, then alphabetically by author's last name, and finally alphabetically by title if an author (such as Peter David) had more than one title appear in a single year.

I just read House of Cards by Peter David. It was published in 1997. What I would do if I wanted to start a discussion of this work is go to the year 1997, create a discussion topic under it titled David, Peter: House of Cards. Then under this topic I would write what I had to say. If I wrote a review of the book, rather than reprint it in the discussion topic, I would just provide the link to it. Then, someone who sees my post, remembers an impression they had about the book, sees something interesting in my post they want to comment on, could then respond there.

It's all about building the platform. Then the fans will come. These discussions could span over a long period of time. Discussions could die down for a year and then be picked up by a new reader of the book, etc. My idea, if implemented, would create an area where tens or hundreds of book discussions of Star Trek books could occur simultaneously and be perpetually ongoing. Does anyone else see the potential here?

I read this a few days ago and thought about it for a while. Ultimately it'd be awesome to have meaningful discussions on the entire set of published Star Trek novels, but I don't know if it is reasonable have discussions for each book. Our latest series read (A Time To...) died out after a few books, and I'm partly to blame because I read them and didn't harass the others into participating more. I still have 5 of the 9 books on my shelf, waiting to be read.

Our group already has discussion topics sorted by series for the recent stuff. I think it would be interesting to add broader discussions like "1980's Original Series" and give the group 3 months to read as many books in that time frame as they can and everyone highlights the gems. As a lazy man, that'd be easier for me than hunting down specific out of print titles, and then I could know what other out of print titles are worth picking up based on what you read and liked.

Ideally everyone is writing book reviews also, which will gather more attention.

Go ahead and start the discussions if you are interested. I will participate as much as possible (knowing that I'm a member of several other groups also). It would be good to pay attention to more than just the new releases.

If I, as a new crewmember here, may butt in, that sounds like a good idea. If broken down by subseries, individual title headings may be the way to go.

Hi everyone. I like the discussion going on here, but I need to chime in:

Currently topics are sorted by series, and then by book. Right now anyone can start a topic for a book, which means that books people are currently reading will be active threads and we won't clog up the group with forum titles that nobody is talking about. Dan: I'm not sure what you're proposing is any different than that, other than meaning someone has to go in and start threads for each individual book, whether or not someone means to discuss it.

Andrew: If folks want to have more general discussions, topics can go under the Hailing Frequencies section. For example, we've got "Best Trek of 2013." I'm happy to start a new section for general discussion if that's what everyone would like.

The key with discussion groups is that you get out of it what you put in. When I started the group back in 2012, I was actively reading at least one Star Trek novel a month. At the time I was also writing reviews of books, which gave me content to get discussions going. I had lots of content, and was engaging folks. But even then, discussions died off right away because nobody was participating. It's pretty discouraging.

And so, I'm putting the onus on you guys, the members. If you want to see an active community, you have to be active yourselves.

Right now the books scheduled as the group read is the latest book, because I figure they have a better chance of being read. There is still space to discuss older books if that's what you're reading. If you want to propose a different book as group read -- and are willing to lead the discussion -- I'm happy to schedule something different (like we did with the TNG A Time to series until discussion stopped).

I would love to talk about the older ST books. Most discussions are about the new releases. The issue, however, is that there are just so many it would be quite a feat to have 2 reading the same book.

If, however, the books were categorized by author, I can see this working.

By the way, I stopped the 'A Time To...' series just because I wanted to read some DS9. Sub genres like this would be another issue overcome by simply discussing an author's work.

Either way I'll surely debate any ST book I've read.

Thank you everyone for your considered responses. I see Andrea's point. So I have just started a topic titled "House of Cards, Peter David", which I posted in the tiny New Frontier section here for lack of a better place.

The difference between what I propose and what is taking place currently is that individual book discussions would then have their own niche and not get mixed in with varied and random discussion topics created about entire series, and other media, such as films and tv shows all coming under the general series heading.

My main suggestion then boils down to a reformatting of where member posts get placed. The present system of organization works, but is it optimal? I think it a good idea instead to see a folder called Book Discussions, or Individual Book Discussions, under which titles of books would be the topic names, perhaps further subdivided by series, or some other method (year of publication? author?) since some books contain characters of more than one series, started whenever a member chooses to start that book's topic, no duplicates allowed. If even old group posts that are about single books were rearranged into individual book topics this way, I think it would make for a more organized feel, one-stop shopping, and easier-to-understand access method for discussions across this entire group.