EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi all,

It's time to select the next book club pick. Standard rules apply.

Please make sure you give a sentence or two why you think we should read it together, not just a list of books you're planning on reading.

If a book is recommended that you also want to recommend, you can mention it again to add support. If there's a bunch of titles, I'll just pick the ones that seem to have the most interest in the poll, if there's just a few i"ll pull them all.

This is a new selection round, so if you want to suggest a book you've suggested before, put it here again to be considered, I won't be going back to past suggestion posts.

Happy reading everyone!

I may have suggested it before…but I’ll throw in A Phoenix First Must Burn.

…and Goodreads freaked out and posted the comment when I tried to convert the title to a link. Sorry about that! Anyway, the reason for suggesting it is that it contains stories from many authors that members of the group have suggested before, so it’s a great way to sample them all at once.

I'll propose the newest book by my absolute favorite author, which I've just gotten from the library: All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay. If you haven't read any of his books, they are sort of a mashup of fantasy and historical fiction. His worlds are thoroughly researched and based on actual historical time periods and personages, but set in an alternate fantasy setting that allows him to play around a little without being constrained by reality. This one is Renaissance Europe. He's written two others in this particular setting and time period - Children of Earth and Sky and A Brightness Long Ago - but they are only loosely connected and can stand alone just fine.

So, I'm going to withdraw my suggestion of All the Seas of the World, because I just finished it and while it CAN stand alone, there are aspects that will be much better appreciated if you've read the earlier books. Instead, I'll put forth one of his other books, that I think is a really good introduction to the kind of thing he writes: The Lions of Al-Rassan, which takes place in a fantasy analogue to historical Moorish Spain. I've read it several times and I cry every dang time. :)

Any other suggestions? I was going to gather a poll soon but two options isn’t a big pick. I can leave it up a few more days. I’ll try to think if I have any good suggestions