Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

OK, let's see if there's any interest in doing a group read & discussion of a SF/F book for next year...

To select which SF/F book we'll discuss, first we'll collect nominations for the book to be discussed.

So, please give your nominations below.

To provide a variety of nominations, you can nominate one or two titles. (If you nominate two titles, try to make one a contemporary book and the other a classic work. Use the year 2000 as a rough border between those.)

My thought is to start the discussion January 4, 2020, hopefully giving people a chance to recover from 2019 and gert some reading done.

We'll collect nominations through next Monday, Nov 18. Then we'll set up a vote to finalize the choice.

Ok, let's get the nominations rolling.

I know for sure I want to nominate Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It's never been read by the group before and I have the HBO version recorded on my PVR but want to re-read beforehand :)

I still haven't quite decided on what contemporary I'll nominate, will make a separate post when I've decided.

I'd like to nominate Elric of Melniboné. I see it's on the groups to-read shelf and seems to have some good reviews.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

For my contemporary, I'm going to nominate The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden. It is the second book in the trilogy but the group already read the first book and I kept seeing people saying they were planning to read the second so perhaps we can do so together, or if you've already gone ahead and read it, can still participate in the discussion. And of course you've got a month and half to catch up on the first book if you haven't read it yet :)

I do not know if the second book will stand alone well without the first.

Andrea wrote: "For my contemporary, I'm going to nominate The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden. It is the second book in the trilogy but the group already read the first book..."

I'm trying to remember The Bear and the Nightingale, which we discussed a year and half ago. It seems Spinning Silver, with a similar Russian setting, has driven Nightingale out of my mine.

If anyone else wants to nominate something, now would be the time....

Was hoping we'd have more nominations, guess we'll see how the voting goes, hopefully there were fewer nominations since voters already saw something they wanted to read, and not that there are only 3 people interested in having a group read.

G33z3r, see no reason why you shouldn't toss in a nomination of your own.

OK, now for the hard part, finding a book more than one person wants to read... :)

I've created a poll to vote for your choice among the above nominees. Please vote here .

Andrea wrote: "G33z3r, see no reason why you shouldn't toss in a nomination of your own...."

It's interesting (and possibly sad) that the top dozen titles on my current to-read list are all continuations of series (or, in one case, an Audible exclusive that wouldn't be accessible to non-Audible members.)

I figure a series continuation isn't a bad nomination if it meets certain requirements:

1 - We recently read the previous book in a group read so a certain number of us are caught up
2 - It's standalone and ok to enter the series at that point
3 - It's very popular and many are reading it anyway (we did a few buddy reads that way, and if several buddies show up, it's kind of a group read anyway)

But it is less likely to win the vote than the first book in a series indeed.

*edit*

And nice, we already have more votes than we had books so that's an excellent start!

  Reminder: For anyone still making up their mind, now would be good.

You may vote here .

And if the book you are voting for has only one vote, can see if you are ok with one of the front runners as your second choice and changing your vote to avoid a runoff :)

So does that result require a runoff poll?

I don't think we need a runoff - it looks like we have a winner with Fahrenheit 451 on 4 votes, ahead of Hyperion on 3 votes. Or does it require more than 50% of the vote?

Usually G33z3r does the 50% thing. However maybe the people who voted for Elric and Girl in the Tower aren't interested in the other two then the vote won't change, but in theory if both have Hyperion as their second choice, then that would change the result.

@Rachel and @Indeneri

Maybe just post here if:

1 - you have no preference between Fahrenheit or Hyperion (i.e. you're fine reading either one or not interested in either)

or

2 - you do have a preference and which one


And I'm so glad I'm in Canada, Celsius is so much easier to spell...

Lol, true. Being an Aussie, I'm used to Celsius as well, but I'm not sure Celsius 232.77 would have worked quite as well as a title :)

Tony wrote: "Lol, true. Being an Aussie, I'm used to Celsius as well, but I'm not sure Celsius 232.77 would have worked quite as well as a title :)"

Loses something in translation indeed.

OK, let's plan on discussing...

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

tentatively starting January 3, 2020, unless there's a strong preference for another date.

I like starting the year off with one of the major classics.

Andrea wrote: "I like starting the year off with one of the major classics."

I like starting the year off with a bottle of scotch. :)

Just a reminder that we'll be discussing ...

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

...in just a few days, starting Friday, January 3, 2020.