Schedule for The Attic Term

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

First of all, many, many thanks to coughingbear for initiating the liveliest set of discussion posts yet, in addition to active and engaged modding. Thanks also to the other mods, ankaret and thewhiteowl. Multos grattas.

The schedule for The Attic Term is as follows:

13th February
Chapter 1: Private and Personal
Chapter 2: A Word with Patrick
Chapter 3: Family Dinner-time
Chapter 4: Up in Sara Crewe

20th February
Chapter 5: Telephone Call
Chapter 6: Patrick Uprooted
Chapter 7: Ginty's Clanger
Chapter 8: Shopping Saturday

27th February
Chapter 9: Second Telephone Call
Chapter 10: Repercussions
Chapter 11: Casual Conversations
Chapter 12: One Verse, Set to Music

6th March
Chapter 13: Spilled Coffee
Chapter 14: Consequential
Chapter 15: Rain on the Just
Chapter 16: Daks Goes Home

If anyone would like to take on one of these posts, do let me know, either below or via pm. I'm also interested in getting volunteers to write the posts for Run Away Home, which discussion will run from 13th March-3rd April. Would people prefer to run straight on to the Players' books then, or perhaps think about a set of posts on themes in the the modern books as a whole?

Once again, many thanks to coughingbear and the mods, and to everyone who's participated to far.

Comments

what next?

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for initiating this read through and keeping it going - I've loved it.

My preference would be to complete the Marlow books and do the Player's books before themes in the modern ones.

I'm also interested in idea of discussing Spring Term, but quite accept that it is not Forest, if people think it doesn't fit here!

Re: what next?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Preference registered.

I think Spring Term fits the remit of the community and I can't see any objection to discussing it. I'm not sure I would myself like to write the posts on it: some things about it rubbed me up the wrong way and I'm not sure I could be entirely fair about it.

Re: what next?

[buntyandjinx.livejournal.com]

Spring Term might lead to some prickly conversations, I'd like the chance to re-read. Where would most of us be able to get hold of Players copies?

Re: what next?

[coughingbear]

Players copies are tricky - certainly I don't have electronic versions of them. I will put out some feelers in case anyone else does.

Both were reprinted by Girls Gone By, though have gone out of print, so dealers like Gill Bilski and Topsyturvy books usually have copies for around £20.

Re: what next?

[(Anonymous)]

If you are in the UK and haven't checked already, it is always worth trying your county library. Kent has 2 copies of Player's Boy.
Mrs Kent

Re: what next?

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

That's (i.e. my partisanship ?partisanness? partiality?) what is stopping me offering a post re The Attic Term (Ginty)! (Well, that and 12 hour days at work at the moment.) I would be happy to offer to do first post for Spring Term if others were interested in it too.

[coughingbear]

I'm torn about whether we should go straight on to the Players books as I'm really looking forward to discussing them, or stop for a bit and do themes.

On Spring Term, I think a post or two for discussion of it would be fine (indeed I think there are at least a couple in the archives). I wouldn't myself regard it as part of the Forest readthrough.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm not sure which I'd prefer myself.

I don't see Spring Term as canon (as I'm not terribly keen on Forest's own suggestions for post-canon happenings, which to me have the feel of off-the-cuff and tongue-in-cheek), and though there were things about it I liked, there were other things I really didn't, and I'm not sure I trust myself to write discussion posts on it without grousing. Like you, I wouldn't, I think, regard it as part of the readthrough exactly.

Spring Term

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

Replied to you without reading the rest of the posts - apologies to all. It makes sense for Spring Term not to be part of readthrough (totally agree it is not canon). I can post on it as and when I have collected my thoughts after readthrough, if that suits? You have both intrigued me already .... and I suspect there may be other strong opinions - which always makes for lively posting!

Future posts

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry if it was rude to post without addressing the question. I don't have strong feelings on the matter, but on reflection, it makes sense to work our way through all Forest's published work, which will put us in a better position to discuss themes across the modern Marlow books.
Thanks for all the work that has gone into the read throughs and the site in general.
Mrs Kent

Re: Future posts

[coughingbear]

Not rude at all (and a very useful reminder about checking libraries.)

[buntyandjinx.livejournal.com]

I'd love a discussion naming our favourite book in the canon and explaining why.

[res23.livejournal.com]

I wonder if for future books, it might be possible to separate the entries each week into smaller posts (like for each chapter perhaps), though I know that might affect some of the cross-chapter discussion.

The problem is that on my screen, at least, all the entries just show as a giant post with threads that get hidden/expanded, and no way at all to tell what is new. So I can see that there are 232 posts on the latest discussion, and only 220 last time I looked, but actually finding the new posts is all but impossible, without going through and clicking on every single 'expand' that there is, trying to remember who the last post in each little subthread was by and whether there might be a new name that I recognise to suggest the new one is there.

When we very first started doing this, the new posts were highlighted with a yellow tag saying 'new', but that stopped very shortly afterwards, and I don't know where that setting is - whether it is something from my end, or more likely perhaps, from the person who starts the post?

Even being able to see the dates of the posts, when in the summary thread, would make it easier to scan for the new ones, but the dates can't be seen until you have expanded them all.

It gets to the point that I stop wanting to comment after a while, as it's too much effort to go through, so I then just give up and wait til the end of the week, and at that point have one last read through where I just expand the entire thing.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

This add-on allows one to right-click and choose "Expand all threads": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/log2stas/

After that I search by date. It's still a bit clunky, but much faster than expanding them all by hand. I don't know if there are similar add-ins for other browsers, but very likely.

[(Anonymous)]

OK, I'll try that, thanks.

I still wish that the option to have the new posts highlighted with the yellow tag would come back, as the first couple of readthroughs were so much easier to follow!

Or having the topics split into smaller ones might still be a good solution; would allow people to go off topic just as much, if they want, but easier to find the new posts.

res