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I like this tradition (two years in a row now makes it a tradition, right?!?) of spending your birthday out here with us in the Golden State. Happy day to you and yours!

Vibes to all.

All excellent points. OK, discussion of the first half of the book now scheduled to begin on September 8.

OK, the official topic for this book is here: Devil in the White City. Feel free to post suggestions for future books in this thread, but the discussion of DITWC will go over there.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson I'm going to suggest that we hold off discussion for a week while everyone starts reading. Do we want to ask people to finish the book before we start, or discuss sections of the book separately? I think we should read Parts I and II the first week, which is about half of the book. Does that seem reasonable to everyone? So let's say a week from tomorrow, Monday September 1, we'll kick-off discussion of the first half, and then if that was about the right pace for everyone, we'll do t

OK, it was a squeaker, but looks like the winner is Devil in the White City! I'll close the poll, and start a new thread specific to that. edit: I don't see how to close the poll without closing the whole thread, so I'm just going to record the current results here (in case more votes come in later): Underworld [ 6 ] [25.00%] Devil in the White City [ 8 ] [33.33%] The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao [ 5 ] [20.83%] Middlesex [ 0 ] [0.00%] The Scarlet Letter [ 2 ] [8.33%] Dox Quixote [ 1 ] [4.17%] Then We Came to the End [ 2 ] [8.33%]

Mart, welcome back! So, did my cousins welcome you with open arms?!? Oh no, that's right, there was some lameness there. And the one who would have been most likely to go see you, in Galway, was away on his own holiday, in Scotland. Glad to hear you had fun, though!

I think this is a great idea. Also, I'll hang onto all of these other suggestions (tons of good ones!) for the next round.

I agree about One Wing, that's very much what I thought when I heard it. Especially having heard Nels live (with Scott Amendola) not long before hearing that song, it struck me that what Nels is doing in Wilco is not necessarily what Nels does best. I'm not sure how the two styles could be more fully integrated, but I agree that just sticking a Nels part into a song doesn't exactly make the best use of his talent. I realize that the "Nels freakout" moments are not all that Nels is doing in Wilco, I guess what I'm saying is that I'd rather have less of those, and more of the other.

Can we try to keep this a legitimate discussion, not get too personal, and not take everyone's arguments to the illogical extreme, please? How about trying to find some middle ground on some of these issues?

OK, the poll's up. I've included most of the picks that were getting some discussion in this thread, so I think there's really only a couple of serious contenders. It's set up so that you can vote for more than one, so feel free to do so if you're undecided. I'll close it out on Sunday morning.

1. I love Breakfast Club. 2. I hate that commercial. 3. I've seen American Teen (and, the guy who made Hoop Dreams said to me about it "I wasn't totally in love with it", during a conversation that, had I know at the time was with the guy who made Hoop Dreams, would have freaked me out completely ). It's a documentary with the premise that all of the high school movie stereotypes are, to an extent, true. So yes, it leans heavily on the Breakfast Club "types".

I would love more suggestions for classics (I'm all about Jane Austen, the "chick lit" of classics!). Christy, anything in particular? I'll toss whatever you suggest into the poll tomorrow.

Why yes, I am talking to myself here, thanks for asking. So pretty much, it's not encouraged/advertised, but it is possible to do it. I'm OK with that!

I hear in Boise, they're Basque fries!

Yay! I'm hoping that once we pick a book, the rest of it will just kind of... happen , but I'm sure I'm going to need help applying some sort of structure to this thing. Thanks!

I'm no longer seeing this on the info page. I've e-mailed to confirm, but being able to leave/come back would make for a much more relaxing weekend for me. And I'm sure the folks organizing this have nothing better to do with their time today than to answer my pathetic little e-mails.

No, looks like it's still TBD. http://www.attblueroom.com/music/Outside-L...information.php Forecast: partly cloudly all weekend, highs in the mid-70s, lows in the mid-50s. Out there in the park, that'll be a very wet mid-50s. Be prepared, lots of layers!

Yeah, me too. I read that one recently, really enjoyed it. That's one of the ones that I was thinking we could do in sections. A hundred pages at a time (or, whatever the closest chapter break is), something like that. It might help if we were all slogging through it together. OK, I'm probably going to make this into a poll tomorrow morning.

Jen, I love that one! I don't see a problem with re-reading a book that people might have read before, I always think I get more out of a book the second time around, anyway (part of the problem with my real-life book club: I always read the book twice before we met, while most of the other folks didn't bother finishing at all, and just brought extra bottles of wine to distract everyone else from that fact). I'm the next-best thing to Oprah, I promise.

Yeah, at the moment Underworld would probably be my pick. I read the first chapter as an excerpt (in Harpers, maybe?) years ago, but never got around to reading the whole thing.

Some priceless pics in there, too.

We talked about doing this a couple of years ago, but if I recall, it got derailed by some ridiculous snipe-fest (Sniping? On VC? Never!). Anyway... anyone interested in doing this? I'll take suggestions in this thread for the next couple of days, then if we don't come to some consensus, I'll make it a poll. We can probably have a book picked and be ready to go by Monday. Depending on the length of the book, we can talk about whether we want to do this in one chunk (everyone just starts reading, and joins in on the conversation as they finish), or do it in sections (read an agreed-upon

He did one once about how "crack whore" was no longer the worst job. It was beaten out for the first time, by "assistant crack whore". He also did one of my favorite jokes ever on SNL, something about how breakfasts with 100% of your RDA of Vitamin D are an important part of a healthy diet, but breakfasts with 101% of your RDA of Vitamin D are deadly poison.