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Firstly, apologies for being so late to getting us all (350+) started with our weekly reading of the first book in the series of The Wizard of Oz. I became a new mom in June of last year, adopting a 10 month old baby boy and my life has since not been anything what I expected it to be coming into 2023, as you can imagine. I begin my maternity leave for work and thus I am able to spend a few hours each day reading and participating on this venture I certainly do not want to abandon before it’s even begun. Therefore, below is the post I wrote many many months ago, before my life changed.
It’s not a definitive schedule but we will still tackle each chapter every week, beginning with tomorrow! For now I will put up a post every Saturday morning at 6am EST. Early, I know. I will be testing several ways of presenting each chapter title, either as the main heading (and email subject) or in the sub-title. It has been so long since I’ve visited Substack and there are so many changes and new tools, why not explore them all to see what works and what doesn’t as we spend the next 24 weeks on book one? To that end, my (at the time) brilliant idea of having a discussion post after each chapter will be changed to use the Substack “Chat” feature. In truth, I have no idea how it works besides to say I think it has something to do with using their app to start a discussion thread? I’m employing this feature in tomorrow’s post. Fingers crossed it will allow for active dialogue and smooth communication within our community. I’ll be sure to have a poll at the end of 24 weeks to see what we liked and didn’t like about this venture before we start on the second book. But there I go getting ahead of myself! Let’s begin!
To kick us off we’re starting with the book we all think we know well and some of us might even swear we’ve read before: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We all feel this way because of the movie that starred Judy Garland and made the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” so well known. But, in fact, many of us haven’t read the book, we just assume the movie and the book are one in the same but like every Disney movie we’ve ever seen, the movie couldn’t be further from the intricacies of the book. Lots had to be left on the cutting room floor.
I took it upon myself to not only count chapters for each book but do a word count and estimate of how long it would take to read each chapter. The last thing I want to do is have this journey take up too much of your free time!
If we sat for 2.5hrs we could feesibly finish the book. But I want to really analyze, dissect, and spend as much time as we can in each and every book.
So look for a new chapter, regardless of length, to be LIVE for your reading pleasure, every Saturday morning at 6am EST. The Chat/Discussion post will be available from the moment the chapter is Live. I’d love for us to just share our thoughts on the reading, compare it to the movie (if you like), and maybe share any images (as I hope to do) from various iterations of the books over time. Let us see where our thoughts take us. And please, NO SPOILERS, although I imagine we all may have read and or seen the movie at some point in our lives. Some of us in the community may not have or this might just be their first time reading the book. I know it’s my first time reading it in several decades so I’m sure it will feel like the first time in many ways.
One more thing…
I have found an audio version of the first book and will embed each chapter for those of us who may want to listen rather than read. The choice is yours. If you find an audio version that is better (I’m certainly going to keep looking myself) feel free to share it with me in the chat discussion. Perhaps we can find the perfect voice for a read-through of this book together.
And with all that out of the way, happy reading all!
Are we going to be getting the whole chapters as emails? The email I got about this post just directed me to come to substack to read it.