With the last two books we had designated discussion leaders whose responsibility included putting together questions to gauge reading comprehension and to flush out questions from participants. This was supposed to occur weekly. At least, from my perspective, the task which was meant to encourage activity turned more into a chore as people who were available to take over dwindled during the progression of the book. Couple this with the reality that the members of this club tend to not ask as many questions about grammar on the thread either.
My proposal was to release that pressure of doing the chore of creating discussion questions for the sake of creating discussion questions and reserve the discussion of book as a whole to the end.
Although I understand the concern that people’s motivation may be tied to the activity on the thread, I personally am not going to obligate myself to doing the discussion leader thing again. Having to do it so many times because there wasn’t anyone available affected my motivation to continue. Not to mention near the end, there weren’t many responses to these discussion questions, which again made me wonder why I even bothered. To be clear, I would’ve finished the book regardless, but having the obligation week after week made participating a chore rather than a treat.
So if there’s activity that happens naturally on the thread, I’ll be happy to participate. What I wrote was meant to say the discussion obligation really exists after we’ve completed the book.