Who wants to have a book club in SL?

Nice choice, Ham.

<< puts on reading glasses

Have you got any thoughts as to a specific day and time to have meetings? The only way I can see to make this 'time zone friendly' to all concerned, including the UK, would be a weekend afternoon, something like 1pm Pacific.

We'll definitely try to get a time/day as many people are cool with, including folks coming in from Europe. (Of course, with SL residents around the world, some may inevitably have to attend bleary-eyed.)

Just dropping a note to say that I think the idea is great, and to cast my vote for you to try to get Cory Doctorow (of BoingBoing fame) in for it. His novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, on top of being a rollicking fun read, is in the general vein of other authors that have been suggested, and as an author he loves this sort of stuff (I originally found out about Second Life from a post he himself placed on BoingBoing.net, actually...). I'm sure he'd do it in a heartbeat.

Thanks for the recommendation, Kats. I'm reading "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" right now, at http://craphound.com/down/ It's a free download. I'm wondering what Whuffie is all about - guess I'll find out.

[Hey - I changed the link, just click on "Download for Free"]

404 Error on that link Kannker...


But yes, that would be a great choice I think.

I tried to follow the link on Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, but got a 404 as well, however, doing a google search for the book title came up with it pretty quick.

Try this:

www.craphound.com/down/

and follow the links to your preferred downloadable version.

Haven't been able to read it yet, but the exciting thing about this book for SL is that it is free to distribute and the author is encouraging that. . .

I'm gonna talk to Neil Protagonist about making this an actual book in his library. . . that would allow us to have a real book club.

Exciting!

Glad you mentioned Cory, Kats! He's actually an aquaintance of mine, and he even plugged me and Notes on his Boing Boing site. I've been thinking about asking him, in any case, and now I definitely will...

Can you provide URLs to where Cory mentions SL or New World Notes on BoingBoing? I suggested SL to BoingBoing a while back, but never saw them post anything about it, and Google doesn't turn up anything for me. (For example, it turns up two matches for "James Wagner Au," the most recent being from February 2002.)

Ooof, took a lot of digging (forget to bookmark it!), but
it was on July 18:

http://boingboing.net/2003_07_01_archive.html#200443713

Reports from the game
My pal Wagner James Au is a pro games writer who's working now as an "embedded reporter" (heh) at a games startup, chronicling the developments in the world of a new massively multiplayer game. posted by Cory Doctorow at 17:31

Thanks. Kats, is this the post where you first found out about Second Life? Or was there another one?

Hey there, sorry about the delay in answering, hadn't checked the forums all weekend long. Anyway, yup, that's the post I was talking about where I found out about SL, I clicked ont eh link, started reading Hamlet's blog, and I Was hooked. Took me a couple of weeks to actually take part inthe game 'cause I was waiting for my DSL line to be installed, but now I'm official.

Glad you guys liked my suggestion, btw, Cory's a good candidate for starting this out with, I think. 'Magic Kingdom' is free to download and read, futuristic, and hits on a lot of really interesting facets of what life could be like in a sort of post-biological world where death doesn't really have much meaning and resource scarcity has been conquered. Plus, the fact that he's released his book online, for free (although if you like it I highly reccomend grabbing a dead tree edition or sending in whatever the book is worth to you in donations, I really want to see this publishing experiment of his succeed) makes it quite accesible to all of us here.

And, Kanker Greenacre, Whuffie is sort of like the reputation system here in SL. People meet you, and based on wether they like you, or your work, or consider what you do to be important, they rate you, thus giving you 'Whuffie', which in turn can be used as a form of currency to aquire better goods and services. Where it gets more complicated is that he also builds in a sort of 'web-of-trust' architecture into his rating system, so that a person can have 'right-handed' and 'left-handed' and neutral Whuffie, and these totals change according tot he person who's checking your total. So that if you see a guy who has a lot of Whuffie, but most of his Whuffie came from people who you disagree with or don't like, then you would see it as 'left-handed whuffie' and if it cam efrom people sharing your beleifs thenti would be 'right handed whuffie', and you would value each acordingly. At least, that's how I remember it going.

Anyway, going back to the topic on this thread, I'm all for pretty much any of the authors that have been suggested, I've read pretty much all of them.. but IMHO Cory might be a good choice to start out with if he'll do it. He's aware of us allready, he's into this sort of thing to begin with, his novel deals with themes that are oddly parallel to the way SL works in many ways, and I think he'd be a good launching pad for others. It's sort of like a talk show, where the more famous guests you've had, the easier it is to get other famous guests/ Well, it might be hard to get a really huge author to do this for our first go around, but Cory's 'just big enough' that it would look really good to have had him with us, and help pull in other authors as they see that this is a 'real thing', as it were. What do you think?

Cool, Kats! Glad you came in via Boing Boing.

I e-mailed Cory last weekend, so we'll have to see if he has the interest and time do it, this month or next. He also works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, so his time might be way booked. (And if memory serves, he's a hardcore Mac user, and if so, we'd have to bring him into the office or somewhere with a WinPC to get him into the world.) We shall see!

Good news, folks-- Cory Doctorow just said Yes to doing a book reading! I'll provide more details in a new topic... meanwhile, keep throwing in your suggestions for other authors. If Cory's thing goes off well (and I'm sure it will), it'll probably be easier to bring in other writers...

Great news hamlet! Now lets work on gettin tom clancy (like you didnt see THAT comeing from me )

Continuing the book club-- anyone want to help take up the reins?

Linden Lab staff and I are still trying to secure more authors for my book club, and that process continues. Along the way, a publicist with a major book publisher said she'd be interested in bringing authors she represents into SL to talk about their book. The author(s) she mentioned to me didn't fit what I do with the Hamlet Book Club, but here's the good news: she said she'd consider doing it for a book club run by residents, too! It's pretty cool that we're apparently big enough a world for her to offer that.

So, would anyone be interested in running such a club? I can't promise it'll include Linden Lab sponsorship, but I will make a bid for them to do so. What I *can* promise is to promote such a club in NWN, from mentioning the time/place to running an article/link to a chat transcript of the event.

So if anyone's interested, IM me or e-mail [email]hamlet@secondlife.com[/email].

YES! YES! YES!

Count me in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Send me an IM/e-mail, and we'll talk!

Meeee!

I did. Let's get together and discuss what we can do and how! (Please not in the 'afternoon' game time *smiles*)

I hope Kim and other Residents can help me expand the book club idea far and wide.

I love to read and this sounds like a great idea, IM me in-world and I'll help however I can

Leilany

Me too please! I'm relativly new to SL but I love books and after reading this thread "Plowing the Dark" by Richard Powers will be my next read.
Two of my favorite authors at the moment that haven't already been mentioned are David Eddings and Anne McCaffrey tho Anne McCaffrey I think is powering down and turning her Pern series over to her son Todd another excellent author in my opinion.

And how come my join date say August? I didn't join till Feburary??? Is this a known problem or did I do something wrong?

No idea about your join date, but those are good suggestions. I actually contacted Richard Powers last year, and had a nice e-maill exchange with him-- he took a look at the SL website and NWN, and was fascinated. Ultimately, alas, he said he was too busy and his attentions were too focused on his current fiction, to do it.

Of course, there's really no need to have the author in-world-- book clubs would work just great as listed Events with a Resident moderator discussing the book with whoever was interested in showing up. And I'd definitely promote such Events on my site and in this forum...

I'm interested too, this sounds like a great idea.

On a historical note, there was one author who spoke in SL. Ellen Ullman, who wrote "The Bug", a novel about programmers / qa people on the search for a programming bug which takes on a life of its own.

It was a full SL house, and a great event.

I'm in for this! Sounds like a great idea. I could use a nudge to start reading some more

Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, also appeared in SL to discuss his book a couple months before Ellen Ullman did. I, unfortunately, missed Doctorow's appearance since my cable was on the fritz at the time, dang it.

I'd be interested in participating in a book group, too. I've been meaning to get around to reading Malcolm Gladwell's books The Tipping Point and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. I would love to see what a sociological researcher like Gladwell would make of SL and its trends, and online gaming in general.