By decree, we decided on Bones, Rocks and Stars by Chris Turney. I propose we start with this book on 13 July. Hopefully I’m not busy referring to myself in the plural.

It is a thin little book, 180 pages, but I’ll still carve it up into little bits: about 30 pages per blog post, which is two chapters, spread over six blog posts. What time frame this will be, I’m not sure. (Spread over six weeks?) It is my intention to write an intro blog post giving a brief overview of the contents of each section, then we can have discussions in the comments.

If I choose to write “independent” posts about the things we learned, I will do so after we’ve had our discussion. The purpose of such posts would be to have something to point other people to: future visitors of the blog that have not read the book. Such posts should provide a brief overview of the important bits to get people up to speed, but for more in-depth details, they would probably refer to either the book, or to our discussion, or to other useful material we identify. Rewriting the book would be silly. This “distillation into an overview” will certainly be a struggle, maybe our discussion can help hack out the important details.

13 July is a Monday. I’m open to shifting it to another day: would you prefer the end of the week? Publish on Friday mornings? We don’t need to rush the discussion… Whatever we decide in the comment thread below, the next post will be with the expectation that participants have read the introduction and the first two chapters: “The ever-changing calendar” and “A hero in a dark age”.

I’m taking two weeks’ vacation before then. The book will go with me, for the plane, the airport, or other idle moments. Thus, the “deadline” we choose really shouldn’t be making any whooshing sounds on my side…