With all things like this, just being busy and only having so much time during any day or week to keep up with things is hard. And often I'll go a long time between checking on the thread to see what's happening. Often, I'll go a couple of weeks between times I look at the thread, just because I don't have time to spend on the computer.
But that's OK. To me, it's alright if no one is posting for a long time because there are other things going on out there that people are paying attention to. Doesn't mean the thread is bad, or that the format is bad -- it's just that other things get in the way.
Right now, everyone's probably checking out the news on FR -- because of the Iraq war and other really big issues out there. So we spend less time viewing discussion topics like this. I'd like to see this continue, because there are going to be times when we will have intense discussions (probably around movie time!) like we did about Aragorn's decision to follow the trail of Merry and Pippin.