Group Read: The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving (planning thread)

Several of us have been talking about John Irving lately, thanks to porch_reader, and I started waxing on about how much I really really love The Hotel New Hampshire. I threw the idea out there of a group read since several people seemed interested in reading it in the near future.

Is anyone else up for this? The only date that's been thrown out was for anytime after this month so, theoretically we could start a week from today. I'm open to whatever.

Added to the group wiki!

Why, thank you! ;)

Leah - Thanks for starting this thread! I'm excited about this group read. I'm fairly new to John Irving. I've read three of his books - Last Night in Twisted River, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and most recently A Widow for One Year. I've loved all of them, but I always feel like I want to discuss them with someone after I've read them. There are themes that wind through each book and across books that deserve unpacking. So a group read seems like a perfect solutions.

In my thread, I posted a link to a recent Nancy Pearl podcast in which she interviewed John Irving. Here it is again for those who are interested:

John Irving Interview

As for timing, I'm going to be out of town June 30 - July 7, so I'd be game for starting July 9, or if you want to start earlier, I can catch up.

I'm in.

I was thinking we'd start on a weekend since most people have more reading time then, but that would push us all the way back to the 14th. That's fine with me since I'm reading a book right now, but would you guys want to start earlier? Say, the 10th?

I'm fine with the 10th.

Either the 10th or the 14th works for me. Maybe we could plan to have the first chunk finished on the 15th, so folks could read during the week or on the weekend.

That sounds like a good idea. I need to get my book out so we can pick our first stopping point, but aiming for the 15th for our first chat sounds good.

So, I was trying to pick somewhat natural conversational stopping points in the book and I'd say the first logical place is after chapter 4, which should be around 100 pages in most editions. That section should certainly provide plenty of chat topics for the weekend! Sound good? I'll start the talk thread Thursday or Friday and we'll go from there.

This sounds great to me. I like that pace! Thanks for organizing this, Leah!

New thread posted here!