Chaos Reading discussion

Okay, having read what people have suggested and having played with ideas in the nomination threads, I have a proposal to make.

1) I've started a Folder for nominating the books we want on our shelves. I'll add threads for the other shelves people have suggested, plus some extras over the next day or so. Whatever books you want to see on those shelves - just add them to the thread.

2) If you think of anything that would make an awesome subject for a group shelf, start a thread for it in the folder. It can be anything from "Books featuring sentient plants" to "Authors we love whose surnames begin with W".

3) Sometimes a random discussion ends up churning out an awesome list of books quite by accident. I might just dump those lists onto a group shelf from time to time too.

3) As we go through, I'm noticing we might need to do something about prolific authors. The shelves would get pretty cluttered with one particular writer's books if we just added "Lovecraft" or "Pratchett". So I thought we could do Group Polls for deciding which of those authors' books we most want to see on the shelves.
For example a "Top6 Weird Lovecraft Stories" or "Top5 Funny Pratchett Books". Let me know your thoughts on this.

4) I know some people wanted the bookshelves to be open to everyone to manually add books to. While I would love to have that for the genuine members of the group, I know from other groups that some authors do take advantage of this feature to post their own books. I've seen shelves full of all sorts of crap, that nobody in the group has ever read. I would really like the shelves to reflect the readers of this group, and to be genuinely useful for people here.

For that reason, I will add the books to the shelves myself for now, based on what people post in the threads. I'm wondering if perhaps there's a way I could approve volunteers from the group who wanted to help with that in the future. I will look into how/if this could be managed if people are okay with that suggestion.

6) I think this will be an ongoing process rather than a bulk dump of books on shelves, so things may change as we go.

Comments? Thoughts? Rotten Eggs?

Jim wrote: "How about a folder for chaos since it's in the name of the group? A quick search tells me that a lot of known scifi authors use the word in titles.

Lord of Chaos Beautiful Chaos Chaos: The Making ..."

Certainly. So: Books with Chaos in the Title?
I have some good Chaos Magick non-fiction books we could put in too, and I'm sure there are some Chaos Theory buffs about too.

Is this a faulty memory that I have? But I am remembering that Chaos was the Goddess of Dischord that threw the golden apple marked "for the Fairest" into the feast that ended with the Judgement of Paris, Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, and the Trojan War? Sounds like a mascot to me.

Good memory. Eris is the Goddess of Chaos & Discord. And yes, I very nearly used the Discordian Sacred Chao (which includes the golden apple) as the group's symbol!

I didn't want to end up attracting nothing but discordians though. That has backfired on me before. I'm all for a fnord here & there, but sheesh......

Ruby wrote: "Good memory. Eris is the Goddess of Chaos & Discord. And yes, I very nearly used the Discordian Sacred Chao (which includes the golden apple) as the group's symbol!

I didn't want to end up attrac..."

I've seen the fnords.

Riona wrote: "Ruby wrote: "Good memory. Eris is the Goddess of Chaos & Discord. And yes, I very nearly used the Discordian Sacred Chao (which includes the golden apple) as the group's symbol!

I didn't want to ..."

Me too *shudders*

I had a student who was one of those. He had pamphlets and everything. Very interesting boy, though.

Tracy wrote: "I had a student who was one of those. He had pamphlets and everything. Very interesting boy, though."

LOL. Discordian pamphlets? Interesting approach. I just have a Pope Card.

The pamphlet told the whole story of the goddess, plus offered ways to worship her, plusrules on how to live your life in accordance with chaos--which seems a bit paradoxical, of course.

Pretty sure my "religious views" on Facebook says Discordian. I didn't know anyone took it seriously enough as a religion to hand out pamphlets.

Riona wrote: "Pretty sure my "religious views" on Facebook says Discordian. I didn't know anyone took it seriously enough as a religion to hand out pamphlets."

Yeah, I think the whole point is that you're not supposed to take it seriously!

Tracy wrote: "The pamphlet told the whole story of the goddess, plus offered ways to worship her, plusrules on how to live your life in accordance with chaos--which seems a bit paradoxical, of course."

Yeah. Kinda like a Day Planner for a procrastinator.

I think it was intentionally ironic, sorta proto-hipster.

rotten eggs?? ooooo Eggs i loved this book but i dont like eggs really

On the topic at hand, I've had a few people ask about when the shelves are going to go up. I'm planning on doing it thread by thread as we get enough to give a decent selection. By the looks of things, the Enjoyable Classics shelf is just about ready to go, and so are a couple of others. I'll keep all the threads open after that so we can keep adding to them, but it'll just make my job easier to do them in large chunks instead of a lot of little dribs & drabs. I'm as keen to see them up as everyone else! *rubbing hands together with glee*

I'm really looking forward to having group shelves that are a seriously good resource for people, and reflect the books that people in the group would recommend.

Jim wrote: "*Pushes Like button*"

Heehee! When ARE they gonna give us one of those buttons? :)