LotR Reading Club

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

OK -- so the pacing issue seems to be the most problematic. H-I raises an excellent point about chapters like "The Council of Elrond," a BIG chapter in more ways than one -- it clearly deserves and requires more attention than say "A Conspiracy Unmasked." I think Mark 12_30's suggestion about a staggered approach has the merit of allowing people to pace themselves, but I think it would probably get too messy and confusing too quickly -- not to mention daunting for those who weren't "keeping up" and (worst of all) it would spread out the posters among a bunch of threads, which would make it more likely the thing fell apart for lack of interest (better to have a core of 6-7 posters on each thread than spread out over several).

In order to address these concerns I have come up with an elegant (nay, brilliant!) idea. Rather than getting caught up on numbers of chapters per week, we should think in terms of chunks. That is, do sometimes a single chapter a week (if it's a biggie like "The Council of Elrond" or "Mount Doom" or "Shadow of the Past") and sometimes more (up to three or even four?) if they are shorter chapters or "lighter." This would have the added advantage of allowing us to decide how big a chunk we can do next as we go. Actually, I would see this as being the moderators prime function in the threads -- laying out the next chunk for the week. That way, if things are going really very well and we're bashing things out at great length, then the mod can move us through at one-two chapters a week. If things are slowing down, or if we're moving through issues that certain chapters don't really address, then we can pick up the pace (3-4 chapters a week).

The final advantage to this approach is that it would allow us to proceed in the discussions by paying attention to the structure of the novel, rather than its division into chapters; that is, we could discuss each 'bit' of the quest in turn -- rather than Chapter One, Chapter Two, etc it could be, Before the quest begins, the journey to Crickhollow, the journey to Bree, meeting Strider, the journey to Rivendell, etc (those are just hypothetical examples).

At any event, I think that there are still a few more things that need to be worked out before we can get this thing started, so hang tight for a bit, and keep the suggestions coming. I believe, however, that we should be able to get this thing on the Road (get it? get it?) within a couple of weeks at the most.