What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. See below for how to join the Salon.

Addendum, January 2, 2011: The Sunday Salon is now a Facebook group! I had to limit membership of the original group to just over 500 members to keep it working properly, but the Facebook group is open to anyone who'd like to participate.

Addendum, January 3, 2010: The membership of the list has just grown to over 500 participants. For some time I've been thinking that once we reached 500 blogs it would be wise to cease accepting new participants. This is because of problems we've had getting Yahoo Pipes, which aggregates all the posts, to work smoothly with such a large number of blogs to sift through. Thus, at least for now, I'm closing off the Salon to new memberships.

Addendum, May 2008: 1. The Salon's membership has grown so large that it's no longer possible for any one Salonist to read all of the Salon posts every week, much less comment on them meaningfully. Salonists should not feel any pressure to do so. Please feel free to skim around, to read what appeals, to visit the blogs that are of interest and forgo the rest. 2. Salonists should feel free also not to post some weeks if they haven't the time to read. 3. Have any thoughts about how the Salon could be improved? Please feel free to join the discussion here.



Recent Posts
See a longer list of recent posts at Yahoo Pipes.

(This list can be slow to appear. If it's not showing below this paragraph, go to the Pipes page to see new posts, or subscribe by RSS. If you don't see your posts there, and they've shown up in the feed in the past, chances are that there's a problem with Pipes being slow and they'll show up eventually.)

LIST OF POSTS WILL LOAD HERE...



Participation in the Salon is open to anyone with a blog and a stack of unread books. (But your blog needs to have an RSS feed.) Here's how to get involved.

(Any news about the administration of the Salon will be posted as a regular Salon post at the-DEBlog.com.)

1. Sign Up
Please see addendum above: as of January 3, 2010, we won't be accepting new members in the Salon.

To participate in the Sunday Salon fill out this form. (If you don't know the URL of your blog's RSS feed you can leave that field blank.) We'll add you to the list of participants in the sidebar here, and all of your Salon posts (the ones you mark as such -- see below) will be included in the Salon feed. (Contact Debra Hamel with questions or problems.)

Your name:   
Your email:   
Your blog's name:
Your blog's URL:
Your blog's RSS feed:
  Check here if this is an update of information you've submitted in the past. In the notes section below, please let me know what it is I need to update (blog name, address, etc.)
Comment or problem? (If you're afraid your posts aren't showing up in the Salon feed, check to see if they're on the Yahoo Pipes page. If they are, there's no problem.)



2. READ
Make time for reading during every Sunday (your time) you're participating in the Salon. You might want to collect a stack of books the night before.

3. BLOG
Blog about your reading as you go, as frequently and extensively as you like. Information you might include in your blog posts:

-- time spent reading
-- pages read
-- information about current reading
-- your reaction to the book
-- link to this page

Format and content are up to you, but one thing is essential: In order for your posts to be included in the Sunday Salon feed, they must include "Sunday Salon" or "TSS" (without the quotes) in the TITLE. You might also include a link to this page so that your readers can learn how to participate in the Salon themselves.

Individual participants in the Salon may decide to read and blog the same book (though it's of course not obligatory). So you might also want to include:

-- what you plan to read the following week
-- suggestions for a group read

4. COMMENT
Spend some time reading other participants' Salon posts. Remember that you can subscribe to receive Sunday Salon posts by RSS, email, or Twitter.

5. BADGES
If you'd like to add a Sunday Salon badge to your site, take one of these. Download an image to your own server if you can, or insert the appropriate code into your site or blog post:


6. PARTICIPANT LISTS
Some Salon members might want to include a list of other Salonists on your web sites. There are two easy options.

First, you can include the list in a pulldown menu by inserting a snippet of javascript code onto your site. The list will update automatically as new members are added. Select an item in the list and the web site selected will open. Below you'll see what the menu looks like and the code you need to add.

For people who want to style the menu with CSS, I've given it the style "salonmenu." In the code provided below I've used CSS to set the width of the pulldown to 200 pixels, but you can alter that number as needed.


Second, you can include a regular list of participants (see the sidebar for an example) by inserting a different snippet of javascript code onto your site. This list will also update automatically as new members are added. Below you'll see how the list looks and the code you need to add. For people who want to style the menu with CSS, I've given the menu the style "salonlist."
Subscribe to the Sunday Salon!

NEW! The old method of posting Salon posts (see below) and having them collected in an RSS feed still works for current members, but see now our new Facebook group. It's open to anyone who'd like to participate, not just current Salonists.

All of the contributors' Sunday Salon posts are collected via Yahoo Pipes into a single feed (how this works). You can subscribe to it by RSS or email or on Twitter.