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Post by David Dashifen Kees on Sept 27, 2013 10:25:50 GMT -8
Noodling about in the topic regarding trance, it hit me that I own the books listed, but I can never get through them alone. My most successful moments with respect to reading non-fiction, especially educational/technical books, is with colleagues. To that end, I call for a book club! I've been wanting to do this sort of thing for some time (I even bought paganbookclub.com and I've been squatting on it now for a few years) but lacked a community that I thought would (a) be amenable and (b) take it seriously. Plus, now with technologies like Google Hangouts and the like, it might even be fairly easy to get group, real-time discussions going on for those who want to. And, those discussions could be saved, archived on YouTube and then shared with the rest of the club members. So, who's with me!?
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Post by Phaedra on Sept 27, 2013 11:06:02 GMT -8
Sounds interesting ^_^
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Post by Admin on Sept 27, 2013 12:42:56 GMT -8
What a wonderful idea! If you do this, ponder how we might connect our efforts into the larger Polytheism Without Borders community. For example, we could link to your site and announce your project from here and/or the blog. This forum could even host some of the off-line book club discussions (we could make a new top level category for it) that you could link to from your site -- if you wanted.
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Post by marybeth on Sept 27, 2013 14:50:04 GMT -8
Cool! Which books?
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Gandillon
New Member
This Halloween: to costume or not to costume?
Posts: 15
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Post by Gandillon on Sept 27, 2013 20:28:41 GMT -8
I would be interested. Maybe we could have nominations for books and then vote on the options?
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Post by lyradora on Sept 28, 2013 9:45:11 GMT -8
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Post by tannimwolfkin on Sept 29, 2013 11:25:39 GMT -8
Greetings All,
I think this is a great idea and would happily join such a discussion group. I have a few books on Trance Work most notably Trance-portation by Dian Paxton. I think it would be very helpful for a lot of folks (myself included) to work with others on this and other topics. Might I also suggest doing the same with the Runes. I am working through both "taking Up the Runes" again by Paxton as well as Runes in Theory and Practice by Galina Krasskova.
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Post by lyradora on Oct 2, 2013 11:37:21 GMT -8
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Post by David Dashifen Kees on Oct 3, 2013 5:30:13 GMT -8
Awesome! I've brought the idea up on a few other fora and usually there's just too many people to get anything started. Larger sites -- usually ones established a few years ago -- just have too much volume and there's almost too many people to focus on things.
Initially, I think we'd just keep it here. I own the other site, but I don't want to half-ass something online there as I always thought it'd be nice to see what I could do to try and provide myself some passive income in advertising revenue for booksellers that might want to advertise to this audience. Plus, we could sort of test the waters and see what sort of things such a process would benefit from. Sure, I suspect there are other book clubs out there we could look at, learn from, and mirror, but where's the fun in that!
That's my thinking as well. Cost is a concern (as someone mentioned above with the Greer text -- did you notice that it's so expensive but Amazon won't give you but $2 if you trade yours in) so I think we'd have to figure a price point at which books are a no-go but after that, we can probably do just about any book the community might be interested in.
The real interesting part is going to be correlating page numbers in different versions (i.e. paper vs. digital) but we'll work something out.
Now: new question, since it seems there's interest --
At patheos, we get books to review and they call it a club. There's very little discussion between reviewers, though, unless we seek it out (which some do). I don't think that's the point of the a book club. For me, the point is to read the book at roughly the same time (i.e. "Everyone finish chapters 1-3 by Friday and do the exercises") and then discuss in chunks what we've read. Is that what you all imagine, too? If not, what would you like to do instead (or in addition) to that?
Cheers!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2013 8:02:28 GMT -8
I'd really like to participate in a Pagan book club, but it's the shipping times that have always stopped me. Being in Australia, things just take longer to get here. I can wait anywhere between two weeks to a month or more for things to arrive (if they don't get lost along the way). If we decided to preference books that also had digital editions, it would make it easier for me to participate, as I wouldn't have to worry about shipping times. Or, if we were going to do a book without a digital edition, we could perhaps give extra time to get the book and read it.
Also, there is clearly something wrong with the prices on that Greer book. That's just ridiculous. o.O
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Post by Admin on Oct 3, 2013 8:10:07 GMT -8
"Initially, I think we'd just keep it here."
Awesome! I can create a whole new board, either at the top level or as a sub-board under the Mental board (you know, when I set those up, I didn't really think about how that would sound -- "mental board" hah!). And I can make you admin just on the book club board if you want (at least, I'm pretty sure I can do that). So you can moderate the discussions yourself. My only suggestion is that if you create any posting guidelines for the book club, that they not materially conflict with the main forum guidelines so that there's no confusion. Of course the topics of discussion may be quite different (depending on which books you choose).
Let me know where you think the Book Club should live on the forum and I'll get it set up for you.
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Post by moonwolf23 on Oct 3, 2013 9:55:47 GMT -8
"Initially, I think we'd just keep it here." Awesome! I can create a whole new board, either at the top level or as a sub-board under the Mental board (you know, when I set those up, I didn't really think about how that would sound -- "mental board" hah!). And I can make you admin just on the book club board if you want (at least, I'm pretty sure I can do that). So you can moderate the discussions yourself. My only suggestion is that if you create any posting guidelines for the book club, that they not materially conflict with the main forum guidelines so that there's no confusion. Of course the topics of discussion may be quite different (depending on which books you choose). Let me know where you think the Book Club should live on the forum and I'll get it set up for you. Can't quite help myself. Don't forget to bookmark it.
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Post by lyradora on Oct 3, 2013 18:33:23 GMT -8
One possibility would be to start with a general book on polytheism. We are all dedicated to different pantheons or groups of Deities, so a general book would probably attract more participants. And I agree that a book with a digital format, as well as print, would be best.
Throwing out a few possibilities, with * indicating digital editions are available:
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans by Chuvin; The Deities Are Many* by Jordan Paper; Dwelling on the Threshold by Sara Kate Istra Winter; Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves* by Pike; Introduction to Pagan Studies by Davy; A Pagan Testament by Myers; Spiritual Protection* by Reicher; The Survival of the Pagan Gods by Seznec; Talking to the Spirits* by Filan; Trance-portation* by Paxson.
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Post by moonwolf23 on Oct 3, 2013 19:07:30 GMT -8
I like Talking to the spirits by Filan and The survival of the Pagan Gods, by Seznec.
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Post by tannimwolfkin on Oct 4, 2013 8:32:15 GMT -8
Of the books listed I like and have Talking to Spirits, Spiritual Protection and Trance-portation. I think working threw any of these with a group would interesting to say the least.
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