Great African Reads discussion

In the Great African Reads group we operate a book club tour across Africa, our Tour d'Afrique. This tour takes to all African countries in alphabetical order. A suggestion thread is set up a month or so before we arrive in said country, members are free to suggest books and, of course, vote on the selection. We then read and discuss the book in the relevant thread, which often includes posts that diverge off the book in question and cover issues to do with the country more broadly - which is all good and ok for members to do! :) We encourage levity and banter as long as it is respectful. We want members to learn from each other, but without the feeling of being in a stuffy academic setting.

Rules for the book club are simple: Join in even if you haven't read the chosen book but would like to contribute! More importantly though, if you do want to discuss spoilers (and you're free to do so), please just make sure that you mark your post clearly, e.g. preface it with "SPOILER ALERT" or something similar so that others are made aware.

Elizabeth wrote: "Hi Muphyn, SInce several people have complained about struggling to get books, when we are voting, I wonder if it is worth indicating which books are out of print and which books are available on kindle? Thanks!


Hi Elizabeth,

That's probably a good idea but would require more research for every book suggested, I guess. Unless people had a look around when they suggested books in the first place (including myself)??

What do others think? Would this help people to orient themselves better and be able to make a more "informed" decision when voting?

I'm not an e-reader person (just yet) so I really don't know but is it likely that many books will be available as ebooks?

Thanks Muphyn for your quick (and appropriately placed) reply. I only recently started using a kindle and have not yet decided if I like it or not, but I live in Africa and it is often very hard to get books, so from that perspective the kindle is great. I am not sure about the availability of relatively obscure books, but I agree with you, that perhaps we share the burden- that is, when ever anyone is making a book suggestion, they could check to see if it is on kindle or not, and then make a point of noting that.

Thanks again, Elizabeth

I think it would be most important at voting-time to do a little research on the book you are most interested in. Of course it would be nice for any of us to let the rest of the group know if a book is rare, but the big issue in this group is that we are international so what might be available in one country may be difficult to find in another. i am in the very fortunate situation of working in a place that allows me access to almost every single book we would ever want to read here. often members do say if a book is widely available on amazon or can be found at abebooks...but the opposite hasn't always been true.

e-books have become much more popular over the past two/three years we have had this group so it would be great if those of us interested in e-books would check and let the others know, especially if a free version exists. i'll start doing that since i read a lot of e-books now. :D

I think it might be worthwhile to indicate if a book is available as an ebook but I don't want to "prescribe" and require people to do that. Where such information is easily available, I think it'd be worth posting...