A Christmas Carol - Chat TODAY

Chat today at 3PM EST (12PM PST) in the usual spot, our chatroom.

Reminder we are discussing A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

"Before our chat, we will watch An American Christmas Carol (1978), in which Henry Winkler is Benedict Slade, "a heartless finance company president in Depression era New England."

Then, during our chat, we will concurrently watch Scrooge (1935), which is the first sound version of the film adaptation, starring Seymour Hicks, who played the title role many times on stage and in an earlier silent film version."

We will also decide our next book, so stay tuned.

Bah Humbug

Thanks to everyone who was able to participate in our Ender's Game chat!  As always, a transcript is available in our chatroom.

To get into the holiday spirit, our next book/movie combination will be A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  It's more of a novella, really, so it should be a pretty fast read.  In addition to reading the book, we will be watching not one, but two movie adaptations!  There were simply too many from which to choose.

Before our chat, we will watch An American Christmas Carol (1978), in which Henry Winkler is Benedict Slade, "a heartless finance company president in Depression era New England."

Then, during our chat, we will concurrently watch Scrooge (1935), which is the first sound version of the film adaptation, starring Seymour Hicks, who played the title role many times on stage and in an earlier silent film version.

We'll check in next week to figure out a time to schedule our chat, but we're tentatively looking at the weekend of December 20 - 22.

Merry Christmas!

Ender's Game Chat Saturday

We're all set for a chat on Saturday, at 9 am Pacific, 12 pm Eastern. Should be interesting to compare the book to the recently released movie! Talk to you all tomorrow and remember, the enemy's gate is down.

Ender's Game

Thanks to those who made it to the Emma/Clueless chat yesterday. We had a lot of fun comparing/contrasting the early 19th century British text with the late 20th century teen film.

Next up in our queue is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

The book is about 350 pages of young adult text, so it will read much faster than the lovely, verbose, Jane Austen.

If we want time to wrap up the year with a Christmas themed text, for example A Christmas Carol, it is important that we get this book wrapped up in the month of November. This means just about three weeks to read the book and watch the movie (which is now in wide release at theaters nationwide).

This will have to be a single book/movie chat, following our viewing the movie independently at the theatre.

When are we available this month to chat? The last weekend of November is Thanksgiving, so that might be tricky planning, but I know I will be in town and easily available to squeeze in a 1-1.5 hour chat.

Emma Chat: Nov. 9th, 4 pm

Alright, gang, we're going to forge ahead with our Emma chat:

Saturday, November 9th
4 - 6 pm

The plan is to chat about the book (in our lovely chatroom) while watching the movie Clueless, which is available on Netflix.

Thanks to everyone for filling out the Doodle poll!  And, it's never too soon to start thinking about what our next book/movie should be...  Feel free to leave ideas in the comments.

Scheduling Chat for Emma / Clueless

“It's such a happiness when good people get together.” 

Hey, gang!  Looks like folks are interested in a long chat while watching the movie, which means we need to pick a date and time.

Let's use a Doodle poll.  If you're unfamiliar, it's a website that allows you to fill in when you're available for an event that needs to be scheduled.  If you log in with Gmail, it'll sync your calendars and autofill the poll based on your availability.  Yes means you're available, (Yes) means "if need be," and No means you can't make it then.  Also, I created the poll in Pacific time, but there should be an option to switch time zones in the upper right.

So, fill out this poll as soon as possible, and we'll see when we're all free.

Clueless Emma Chat Approaches

Fall has started, which means September is almost over and our early October chat is just around the corner.

How are we doing? Finished? Almost finished? Almost started?

Is everyone able to secure a copy of the film so we can watch it as a group?

Let us know where you are at in the book, when you are available to chat, and whether you prefer to participate in

a) 1 "long" movie watching / book discussing chat
b) 2 separate chats: first about the book (before watching the movie), and a second about the movie (after watching the movie) - these chats can be on different days, over different weekends.
c) 1 "short" chat where we discuss the movie and book together, after both are complete.

So many choices, pick the one that works the best for you schedule. But please be as flexible as possible since we are working with many different schedules, and different time zones.