A Very Close Race and Some Questions

Apparently I chose three very interesting books to decided between for April's book. By one vote the winner is:

Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne.

However, all three books received more than one vote, which has lead me to ask some questions that have been on my mind lately:

About 2 weeks ago, I started looking into the book choices for next years time frame, and to be honest I'm having a hard time coming up with enough classic novels, and I've been wondering how to remedy the situation.

Here are my ideas for fixes so far and I would appreciate your inputs.

1. We can have an assigned book, instead of voting. (for example we could say Jan. book IS the Odyssey, by Homer- no voting)

2. We can have both books and authors to vote on. (for example in Jan we can read the Illiad by Homer, however in Feb. the topic will be Plato and you comment on which ever of his works you found and read that month during discussion time. This is a much more you have to do some work alternative.)

3. We can combine the Ancient-400 time frame with the 400-1600 time frame. (getting through all of these books in one year instead of two.)

4. We can spend the first 3-6 months of 2010 continuing this years era and read some of the books that have narrowly escaped the votes, like: Great Expectations, Les Miserables, Bleakhouse, The House of Seven Gables, and others that I'm sure will come close later this year, etc. before moving on to the ancients the second half of the year.

I realize that you have all been very kind in letting me run the show since I took over for Mrs. Brooke, however, I really do want you to feel like this is YOUR book club too. So please let me know your feelings about how we should keep the group going next year.

Welcome

For those of you who may not have read recent comments added to our Scarlet Letter discussion. We have a new book club member, Magali. And I wanted to say WELCOME. We are always so excited to ad another mind to the thoughts that we have on the book selections.

Magali is originally from Brazil, and english is her second language. As one who studied Spanish for two years and can only remember about 3 sentences, I am amazed with the eloquency in which she is able to give us her imput and I can't wait to have another voice in our thoughts on Moby Dick on March 5.

Good luck with your reading, I think everyone is struggling to finish this one on time, but I am very excited to talk about it.

Again, welcome, Magali and thank you all for being a part of the group.