Book

[Arielle]

We need to decide on a book.

My suggestion was Looking for Alaska since we are pretty much all here because of John and LfA is the smallest of his books and paperback so cheapest to ship.

If you have any other suggestions or just want to second LfA please feel free to let us know!

[Nora Morales]

I agree that it should be Looking for Alaska.

[Mickey]

I think that many of us have already read Looking for Alaska. I feel strongly that this should be an expansion of our knowledge, literary repertoire, and nerdfightery horizons! Therefore I propose:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon

[Crosskitelines]

Maybe we should all make a list of 5-10 books we want to read and get an unbiased person to pick for us.

[Crosskitelines]

10 points to who ever can get john or hank to do it!

[Nate Pez]

Or we could make a discussion topic with a list of great candidates, where we, the people, vote on which book we want to read.

I vote for Instant Runoff Voting as our method.

[Arielle]

What is this instant runoff voting method?

[Nate Pez]

It's a more accurate, fairer way of gauging the public's support for candidates.

Instead of "normal" voting, where each voter casts one vote for the candidate of their choice, each voter ranks ALL the candidates (or as many as they want to, I suppose) in order of their preference.

I'm not very good at explaining it, but I think Wikipedia does a decent job of it.

One of many good ideas for "election reform" in American politics. It also happens to work nicely for book-choosing, I'd imagine. :^)

[Arielle]

ok so i think i understand how instant runoff works but the only way to get everyone to vote i think would have to be through email because not enough people check the group that I can tell, so if those of us who actively check here want to come up with a list of books, then I can send out an email asking everyone to rank the books and calculate the results.

Aside from LfA the following books have also been suggested so far:
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon
Catcher in the Rye
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Thirteenth Tale
Lullaby by Chuck Palhuniuk

And just to add to that I have a list of books I keep that I want to read so I'll just add a few others:
An Abundance of Katherine by John Green
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landou-Banks by E. Lockhart
13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
Devilish by Maureen Johnson
Buermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson
The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

So I guess we now compile a list, narrow it down to about 5-10 then I'll send out another email to everyone having them rank the book by preference. Or Nate, since it was your idea, you can send out the email once we have a list of books and calculate the votes and all...you know the email account info already.

[Whitastic]

Nick&Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn&David Leviathan
Paper Towns?!

[Nate Pez]

I hereby nominate Malcolm & Jack (And Other Famous American Criminals) by Ted Pelton. I've never read it, and I want to.

Ted Pelton is one of my literary idols. He's hilarious and insightful and very very smart. The book is about Malcolm X and Jack Kerouac, if memory serves. Like I said, I've never read it.

[Amy]

I nominate Define "Normal" by Julie Anne Peters.
=D
Or, really any book by Julie Anne Peters

[Kyrie]

I think it should be some lesser known book. It's not like we only have to do this project once!
We could vote on several different ones. I think that while I would like to reread LfA and the like, I have a copy, AND while it's cool that this copy will have gone through tons of awesome nerdfighters, I still think it should be something that it's unlikely we all have read. Maybe we should start a new discussion where each member who has an idea can post once with the book title and a short summary, (like the blurb on the inside/back cover of the novel). Then after we have some suggestions we start a poll where the members can vote and we'll send out the book with the most votes.
But basically, I still say that we should send around a lesser known book, and maybe help bring up it's popularity :) I know a lot of great books that no one's heard of!