1---
2title: "Book club"
3description: "Low-commitment book club over plaintext mailing lists"
4date: 2024-06-26T18:46:34-04:00
5draft: false
6rss_only: false
7cover: ./cover.png
8type: generic
9---
10
11This is a mailing list-based book club co-organised by myself and [Jake
12Bauer.][jb] We intend to follow much of [how Phil Eaton runs his book
13clubs,][pebc] albeit with slight tweaks.
14
15[jb]: https://paritybit.ca
16[pebc]: https://notes.eatonphil.com/2025-05-30-how-i-run-book-clubs.html
17
18- Anyone can join whether or not they intend to participate; lurkers are
19 welcome!
20- We'll read some amount of the current book each week, then a discussion leader
21 will start a new thread over the weekend that anyone can reply to.
22- Each book gets a new mailing list, so briefly dropping out if you're not
23 interested in the next book is as easy as not subscribing to that list.
24- Once the group decides on the next book, Amolith or Jake will post it to the
25 announcements list.
26- We'll try to limit the amount of reading each week to something a fairly busy
27 person can keep up with.
28
29## Joining
30
31- Subscribe to the low-volume announcement list by sending an email to
32 [~amolith/book-club-announce+subscribe@lists.sr.ht.][ann-compat] No human will
33 see the email, so the body and subject can contain anything.
34 - Replace `+subscribe` with `+unsubscribe` to unsubscribe.
35- If you intend to participate, please read over SourceHut's [mailing list
36 etiquette][mle] page, then subscribe to the book's list (below) the same way
37 as the announcement list.
38 - [~amolith/book-club-how-to-do-nothing+subscribe@lists.sr.ht][first-compat]
39 We'll try to keep this up-to-date.
40
41[mle]: https://man.sr.ht/lists.sr.ht/etiquette.md
42[ann-compat]: mailto:u.amolith.book-club-announce+subscribe@lists.sr.ht
43[first-compat]: mailto:u.amolith.book-club-how-to-do-nothing+subscribe@lists.sr.ht
44
45## Public archives
46
47- **[book-club-announce][ann-web]:** Book club announcements—new lists, dates,
48 etc.
49- **[book-club-how-to-do-nothing][first-web]:** _How To Do Nothing: Resisting the
50 Attention Economy_, by Jenny Odell ([Wikipedia])
51
52[ann-web]: https://lists.sr.ht/~amolith/book-club-announce
53[first-web]: https://lists.sr.ht/~amolith/book-club-how-to-do-nothing
54[Wikipedia]: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources?isbn=9781612197500
55
56## Differences between this and Phil's book club
57
58We use [lists.sr.ht] instead of Google Groups, which does give us access to the
59finer permissions Phil mentioned were missing from Google Groups. Anyone can
60browse and reply to existing threads but neither create new threads nor
61moderate. Discussion leaders can browse, reply, and create threads, but not
62moderate. For now, Amolith and Jake are the only ones with full access to all
63the lists, though we'll appoint additional moderators should they become
64necessary.
65
66[lists.sr.ht]: https://lists.sr.ht
67
68We don't have access to any kind of metrics beyond the number of replies to
69threads. SourceHut doesn't expose _any_ information about subscribers or even
70give us a subscriber count.