Welcome to Week 8!

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Hello everyone!

Hope you are all having a great week. Since papers or booktalks are due at the end of this week, there is no prompt response due. However, please do the readings anyway - this week we are thinking about quality vs. demand in fiction - some pretty weighty issues. Do we spend lots of money on titles that are popular but that maybe aren't the greatest critical hits? Do we try to push people towards more "quality" books? Who defines what is a quality book and how? What is the role of reading? So many fun..fun questions to talk about - I really picked the wrong week to have your papers due!

So, due by the end of this week:

Special Topic Paper OR Booktalks
Women's Lives and Relationships Annotations

NEXT WEEK, we are going to be doing something a little different. We will be coming back to Oncourse forums for online book discussions! We will all be reading the short story Sur by Ursula K. LeGuin, which is in Week 9 resources. I will be dividing you into five groups and you will each participate in a forum-based discussion. If you have never done so, I highly suggest checking out Goodreads or another book site that hosts online discussions to get an idea of how they are organized and how people participate. There will be no prompt response - your participation in your book group will count as that.

I will also be harassing five of you to be group moderators. Please let me know if you would like to volunteer - thanks.

Can't wait to read your papers and see your booktalks - as always let me know if you have any questions!