#1b1t Chooses Neil Gaiman Title: Reading Discussion Schedule Update

It was officially announced last week: the One Book One Twitter book club will be reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. The start date was yesterday, but there’s still time to jump on board. If you are curious about just how a Twitter-based, global book club works, you are not alone. In fact, #1b1t’s Marcel Valdes recently brought up the question on the One Book One Twitter website, answering her own question of “how do you get thousands of people to read one book together without ruining the suspense and twists for anyone?” with the presentation of a pretty cool (and very organized) reading and clubbing schedule:

You can read (or reread) any way you want during the next eight weeks – God help us if we tried to stop you – but please, please be kind to others and stick to the following schedule for your comments. That way even the most delicate readers among us will have a chance to enjoy Gaiman’s finely-crafted thrills.

If you feel slightly queasy about tackling such a big book, use this schedule to divvy up the task into manageable chunks. Each week, this schedule covers 70-100 pages, which you can nibble down bit by bit every night before bed, or gobble down in one great, lazy Sunday bender, but keep in mind that the discussion of anything in those chapters is fair game starting from day one. Happy reading everyone, and remember to follow @1b1t2010 for updates and to add the #1b1t to your tweets!

Week 1 : May 5-11
Caveat, Warning for Travelers
Epigraph
Discuss Chapters 1, 2, & 3

Week 2 : May 12-18
Discuss Chapters 4, 5, 6

Week 3 : May 19-25
Discuss Chapters 7, & 8

Week 4 : May 26-June 1
Discuss Chapters 9, 10, & 11

Week 5 : June 2-8
Discuss Chapters 12, & 13

Week 6 : June 9-15
Discuss Chapters 14, 15, & 16

Week 7 : June 16-22
Discuss Chapters 17, 18, & 19

Week 8 : June 23-30
Discuss Chapter 20 and Postscript

And, Jeff Howe has added additional organizational tools with the prescribed use of special Twitter hashtags for each chapter.

We have established an official system of hashmarks. It goes like this:

#1b1t: General Discussion

#1b1t_1c: Discussion of Chapter 1 (and prologue material)

#1b1t_2c: Discussion of Chapter 2

… and on until we hit Chapter 19.

So begins a very cool bookish social media community event experiment! Now to decide, where to buy the book, and in what format?

Hope you’ll all be joining in. It promises to be fun and very, very interesting!