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Delayed, but not forgotten, the babble book club has an official new selection! Or perhaps that is better phrased as selections?

You see, we wanted to read some Alice Munro in light of her recent Nobel Prize in Literature win and her general excellence. So, we started discussing which selection we should all read together, and well, you can see how that would be tough.

We had many, many suggestions and couldn’t narrow the field, so we decided that we would read them all! Just kidding! We’re only a monthly book club here! Instead, we are leaving it as a reader’s choice and discussing not only our selections, but the themes presented in Munro’s writing across her canon as well as how she became such a prolific writer.

Of course, the discussion is not limited to just that: we can discuss the rising prominence of women’s writing and maybe those critics too, Munro’s textbook examples of short story writing and her writing within the landscape of Canadian literary arts.

We will have our final discussion on Friday December 13 at 2:00 p.m. EST in the babble book lounge where everyone is invited to share their thoughts.

Want to “join” the babble book club?

Please do! It’s easy and free because all you need to do is register as a rabble.ca user!

The babble book club doesn’t have official members — any rabble users, or new friends who want to join in the discussion, are welcome.

First, here are some tips to become a rabble.ca user:

1. Go to our log-in/registration page and fill out the subsequent information. Don’t worry, providing us with your email will not automatically set you up for emails from rabble.ca nor will we give your email to anyone else — it is just for security reasons. Also, feel free to use a pseudonym as your username, most people do!

2. Once you sign up, become familiar with our babble policy and check out our FAQ babble page for tips and tricks on how to post in babble. A babble quirk? You have to refresh your page in order to see new posts on that thread. A bit time consuming, but we’re working on it!

3. Look around and get familiar with babble by exploring all the different threads on the discussion board, including the babble book lounge where our discussion thread is set up for Alice Munro. babble offers a lot of different topics with a lot of different users and is a great place to discuss current affairs, gardening, writing and hockey, among other things!

Second, here are the nitty gritty details of how the conversation works:

1. Our final discussion for Alice Munro books happens in the babble book lounge on the previously established babble thread Friday December 13 at 2:00 p.m. EST for one hour in real time. Real time means there will be more members of the book club present and the conversation will have a quicker flow. Our moderator (username: Kaitlin McNabb) will kick off our conversation with a hello!

2. Even though we have a final discussion date, everyone is encouraged to discuss their thoughts on the books during their reading process. The advantage of having an online book club is it is flexible and available all the time! Since this part of the conversation is not in real time, comments might not be responded to immediately, but eventually.

3. During our final discussion everyone is encouraged to post their questions and comments with respect to other babblers on the thread. We want to create lots of discussion and find out whatever everyone thinks about this selection!

And that’s it! Pretty simple, really.

If you need some great Alice Munro book suggestions, head on over to our Alice Munro babble book club thread or our babble book club Facebook group for ideas!

Tell us what Alice Munro book you are going to read and why you chose that one!

Happy reading everyone!

Photo: Derek Shapton/McClelland & Stewart