Join the email discussion group for That Tome of the Month

In the past few weeks I've been thinking about how best to encourage reader participation. A simple comments feature on the blog itself didn't seem sufficient. I considered a message board, but those are often saddled with the annoyance of advertising, and spam can be a problem as well.

So how to attempt to foster a sense of readerly community? I've settled on the concept of an email discussion group, which my friend Ivan has very kindly set up for me. You have the option of getting individual emails or daily digests--whatever works best for you. Members can discuss the monthly tomes in advance as they're reading them, or talk about past tomes. The ground rules are simple: try to keep the focus on books, and treat one another respectfully. I will not pre-screen messages to the list, although I will lightly monitor the discussions in the highly unlikely event that there is a need to intervene.

Click here to join the email discussion. I hope you'll want to participate in the dialogue about November's Tome of the Month, The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde. It's riveting stuff.