We’re really excited about this! It’ll be a great opportunity to read a really powerful book and to bounce around some ideas so that we get the most out of it.
Here’s the lowdown:
The Book
The results of the poll are in and the winner by a landslide is:
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.
It’s available on Amazon for $12.85 (Kindle) or $13.61 (Print)
The Plan
All book club related activity will take place right here in The Book Club category.
Every week we’ll read a chapter. (We may split some of the final longer chapters across two weeks).
I’ll create a corresponding thread in the Book Club forum for discussion.
We will kick off each week with one or two broad questions to consider before reading, a couple of key observations to go through on your own directly after reading, and then open it right up for opinions and other questions in weekly discussion thread.
For the first couple of chapters Luke will lead the discussion.
Once we find our feet we’ll open it up to anyone (or any group) who is keen to take a turn to facilitate the discussion for the week.
Depending on the chapter content we might discuss:
- Key takeaways
- Initial reactions
- Favourite quote/passage - significant, interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, memorable…
- Central idea
- What were the themes?
- Does this affect how we work? Implications.
- What evidence did the author use? Personal opinion, observation, science/statistical, historical?
- Other potential solutions
- Which things are controversial? What do we each think of these?
- What have we learned? How have we been extended? What opinions did we change?
- What are other books/articles on this specific, closely-related topic?
The Timeframe
Right now
Introduce yourself and say hi to everyone here
4 June
Deadline for buying your book – details above
5 June
Begin reading first chapter, with one chapter per week after that.
I’ll start a new discussion thread at the beginning of each week.
If people start to fall behind we could take a break in the middle to play catch up.
The Guidelines
Take notes for discussion as you go - mark anything significant, amusing, insightful etc
Comment in a way that moves the discussion forward (i.e. use meaningful language, not just ‘I don’t like it’)
Support your views with evidence and/or specific passages
Have fun!