[The Saucepan Man]

While flexibility is key, I think that we should devote at least a week to each chapter, whatever the length of the chapter. Although the chapters themselves will not take long to read, the process of reviewing the comments made by others, posting your own and then responding to subsequent posts where necessary will take up quite a bit of time, especially with real life to contend with too. Also, if we all post our thoughts within a day or so of reading and then move on to the next chapter, it will be difficult to get a discussion going on any one chapter (in the sense of responding to and developing issues raised by others). And personally I would prefer to concentrate on one chapter at a time rather than be flitting between multiple chapter discussions (again given time constraints imposed in the real world).

Mister U, I take your point about the length of time that this will take. You are quite right that the book was not meant to be read at such a slow pace. But I don't see that this necessarily needs to be a problem. We have all read the book at least once before (and most have read it many times before), so we have a good idea of where each chapter falls in the general scheme of things. In addition, there is nothing to stop people reading ahead if they want to and then going back to re-read the specific chapter coming up for discussion.

Maybe its just because I am someone who takes a long time to formulate posts of any length and substance, but I do think that we will get a better discussion going if we concentrate on each chapter individually and allow everyone time to collect their thoughts and react to what others are posting. That does not preclude flexibility, but an underlying structure of one week per chapter (and longer for the longer chapters) seems good to me. There will of course be some overlap in any event as the discussion on previous chapters continues, but this shouldn't be allowed to constrain the development of the discussion on the current chapter.

As for the idea of "blocks", I would again prefer to stick to individual chapters, although I am sure that ideas will carry across from one thread to the next as recurring themes and ideas developed from one chapter to the next come under discussion.

Finally, I was quite enthusiastic about sticky threads when the idea was first raised, but I can see the problems. Still, it would be quite nice to have the option of putting the threads into chapter order. Is there any way that this can be done while still having the option to have the chapter currently under discussion at the top?