A few new things at EQUIP book club

You may have already noticed that I've been spending some of the holidays tinkering with the EQUIP book club site. We hope you like it and can still find your way around!

I've made a couple of changes to the content as well. I've included books we've already completed down the left hand side so you can find them easily. You don't have to be reading the book of the month to take advantage of the notes published on the site. You can read any or all of the books at your own leisure and go back and see what the contributors thought at any given point. And it's never too late to leave a comment!

Speaking of comments, we love getting comments. We would love to get more! We've noticed that many readers get our posts by email, so we've added a line to the bottom of each email that makes it easier to comment. All you need to do is click on the link and it will take you straight to the comment page (thanks to Rachael for this suggestion!).

So now we're talking about comments, how about you try out the new system? You could leave a comment telling us which books you've read with us this year, or just say hi!

And we'll be announcing our new book list for 2009/10 soon, so stay tuned.

A bit of blog housekeeping

Before we really get started with next month's book, there are a couple of things I wanted to mention to all you EQUIP book clubbers...

First, we've changed the commenting procedure so that it's a little easier to leave comments now! You can now leave a comment without having a Google account or blog. We would still love it if you could give us your full (real!) names. We're still moderating comments, and won't publish any that don't comply with our comment policy.

I also want to 'introduce' you to Ali who will be sharing the bloggy administration and day to day blog posting with me. In fact, this month, she'll be the one doing most of the work while I write my notes for next month! She is already down to contribute notes for Carolyn McCulley's book Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye?. You can find out a bit more about her on our contributors page, and her blog, Something this Foggy Day.

Some great comments...

There have been some great observations shared and questions asked in some of the recent comments, so make sure you check the comment threads. Carmelina has taken the time to answer questions from some of us about Vatican II in response to this post and the Pope in response to this post, which I found particularly helpful. And she also has asked us a question: "Should we give our Roman Catholic friends a copy of Ray's book?".

EQUIP mini book clubs

A few people mentioned in response to this post that they are planning on setting up EQUIP 'mini book clubs', where they'll meet over coffee or dinner and discuss the book of the month in person. I was very encouraged to hear this. If you are doing this send me a photo and I'll publish it on this site - then we can all share in the fun!

A guide to commenting

As I've mentioned, part of the aim of this book club is to get us chatting about the books we're reading. In order to do that, you'll need to leave comments on this site. Because the commenting process can be a bit confusing when you do it for the first time, I thought I would write a simple guide to commenting at the very beginning. So after you've finished reading this, you'll have no excuse for not commenting!!

Step 1: Choose which 'post' you want to comment on. At the bottom of the post it tells you how many comments have been left - eg. "2 comments". Click on those words and you'll get to the comment screen.

Step 2: On the left hand side of this screen, you'll see any comments that have already been made by others. On the right hand side, you'll see this:


























Step 3: If you don't already have any account (a Google account, or one that is recognised in the 'Open ID' option), you'll have to create a Google one now. If you do have an account, proceed to step 4.

To create a Google account, click on the words "Sign up here"(in blue on the right hand side) and you'll get to this page:






















You'll need to fill in this page, providing your email address, password and display name (your real name, and preferably full name for this site). Once you've agreed to the 'terms of service' down the bottom, press the orange 'Continue' button. You'll be brought back to the original 'Leave your Comment' screen.

Step 4: Type your comment in the box that says: "Leave your comment".

Step 5: Type the characters you see above, in the 'word verification' box (this tells us you're a real person and not a spammer!).

Step 6: If you want to know what comments are made on this post after yours has been published, tick the option that says "Email follow up comments to (your email address)...."


























Then click on 'Publish your comment', and your comment will come through to me for moderation; once it's passed through the moderation process at my end, it will appear on the blog at the bottom of the list of comments under the post.

There... It may sound complicated, but once you've done it once, it's a breeze! And it will be worth it, because the book club won't be a book club without your comments.

A bit about EQUIP book club

Welcome to our newly launched EQUIP book club site. After many months of planning, I'm so excited that we're about to start! I'm excited because I love reading, and I love having conversations about the books I read with friends. Now I'll be able to have conversations (of the electronic kind) with many, many more women.

For this first post, I wanted to explain a bit more about how the book club will work. The EQUIP committee have chosen 11 different books that we hope will interest you - they are all books that at least some of us have read and loved and want to share! We've tried to choose a wide range as well - we have a classic (The Pilgrim's Progress), a modern secular novel (The Sunday Philosophy Club), books that relate to the Christian life (Don't Waste your Life), books that are particularly relevant to women (Feminine Appeal and Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye?), biography (Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God) and many more. As well as choosing them for their diversity, we tried to choose books that would generate good discussions (we won't always agree with everything in the books - and that's okay, except when we read Luke's gospel!!).

While all the books are worth reading, you don't have to read all 11 books to be involved. You can choose the ones that interest you and read along and skip the other ones, or save them for later if you're struggling to read a book a month (I admit it is a big ask for many of us!). Either way, we hope you could use the book club as a motivation to read more (more on that in a later post).

As well as reading along, we'd love it if you commented on the reflections and questions we contribute. We're hoping that our thoughts will work as 'conversation starters', so please join in. It will make it so much more interesting if you get involved and share your thoughts.

The contributors are going to write at least 4 reflections on their book for the month. I'm hoping to post one of these each Monday. As well as checking in on Monday, it will be worth checking in every couple of days for other things that I'll include which relate to the book - eg. interviews, links to articles, poetry, reading lists, book reviews.

You can find our comment policy on the sidebar to the right. I'll be back next week with a post explaining how to comment (it can be more tricky than it sounds sometimes - believe me).

Once again, I'm looking forward to reading along with you, and hearing your thoughts.