SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I finished Babylon's Ashes yesterday and I enjoyed it so much I made an exception on my normal weekly review writing schedule: My Review

I just gave up on Low Town and The Grace of Kings, neither captured my interest. Will pick up Dragon Spawn. Apparently I am a lightweight... :)

Ok this is probably ambitious but I plan to read ALL Stephen King has ever written in the next 2 years. Accordingly, I started Carrie today, the first of his novels. I've read some of his works but this will be a long beginning-to-end project, so wish me luck.

Stoyan wrote: "Ok this is probably ambitious but I plan to read ALL Stephen King has ever written in the next 2 years. Accordingly, I started Carrie today, the first of his novels. I've read some of his works but..."

Send up a smoke signal if you get lost! Otherwise, good luck and enjoy!

Have fun, Stoyan!

Check out the Your Year in Books feature on the Home page. I'm happy that it used the page counts for paper books, instead of the weird and unhelpful page counts for audiobooks.

Yes, I saw that too! I hate the way the stats page doesn't account for audio so I was looking forward to the year end thing this year. It's so exciting to see it all summarized. And your average rating and book length, too. It's fun.

Im glad to see all the love for BABYLON'S ASHES!

Chris wrote: "Check out the Your Year in Books feature on the Home page. I'm happy that it used the page counts for paper books, instead of the weird and unhelpful page counts for audiobooks."

I like to know how many hours an audiobook is personally. But this site needs better support for audio ( not to mention rereading)

Yes to both!

Chris wrote: "Check out the Your Year in Books feature on the Home page. I'm happy that it used the page counts for paper books, instead of the weird and unhelpful page counts for audiobooks."

I'm note sure how that's being calculated but from my stats I can see that I listened to 24 audio books that seem to total 6,291 pages. That's an average of only 262 pages per book, which seems a bit low. When I get time I will take a look in detail and try and figure out how it's calculated.

AndrewP wrote: "I'm note sure how that's being calculated but from my stats I can see that I listened to 24 audio books that seem to total 6,291 pages. That's an average of only 262 pages per book, which seems a bit low. When I get time I will take a look in detail and try and figure out how it's calculated. "

My longest audiobook (42 hours) is being incorrectly listed as my longest book and it shows up as 1011 pages, which is the MMPB version of the book. Looking at the "all editions page" I think the MMPB is the most popular (highest number of ratings).

So it's likely that's the case for your stuff too.

Personally I don't find Goodread's stats to be correct/sufficient enough though, so I wrote an application (https://github.com/robertzak/goodread...) that gives me much better data. However it's very customized for me at this point. Maybe some day it'll be a webpage someone can use for their own uses, but probably not unless I find someone to help with parts of it.

Number of Books: 34
Total Pages: 11685
Longest Book (Pages): 726
Average Pages: 343.68

Number of Books (Excluding Graphic Novels): 26
Total Pages (Excluding Graphic Novels): 10421
Average Pages (Excluding Graphic Novels): 400.81

Number of Audiobooks: 51
Total Audio Hours: 880
Longest Book (Hours): 42
Average Hours: 17.25

I actually had my page count decrease yesterday by 320 pages in between looking and I hadn't done anything.

Number of books: 315
Total Pages: 125,234
Pages DNFd ~5,000
Longest Book: 1232
Average Pages: 398
Average Rating: 3.5
Most Popular: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Least Popular: Kings and Assassins

My longest audiobook was 48 hours but it mistakenly repeated three chapters so it was 52. Unfortunately it was such a confusing book anyway that I listened to two of the duplicate chapters.

It has been such a totally insane year and I'm throttling back next year. And catching up on Doctor Who and Grimm.

My reading is way down this year, I blame Overwatch and World of Warcraft.

I've been trending downward a bit since 2014 though. Nothing like several of you guys do in a year, but still a lot better than I was doing before I joined goodreads in 2012.

Rob wrote: "AndrewP wrote: "Personally I don't find Goodread's stats to be correct/sufficient enough though, so I wrote an application (https://github.com/robertzak/goodread...) that gives me much better data. However it's very customized for me at this point. Maybe some day it'll be a webpage someone can use for their own uses, but probably not unless I find someone to help with parts of it."

I am intrigued. I'll look into this later.

I started my own group last year and it became incredibly intense with people scheduling way out into the following year. It started to feel like I could never read enough and I read 50,000 pages more than I have any other year. I've started calling it my crazy psycho group. I stepped down as mod, took a deep breath, and wiped my calendar for next year. It was glorious.

Sarah Anne wrote: "I started my own group last year and it became incredibly intense with people scheduling way out into the following year. It started to feel like I could never read enough and I read 50,000 pages m..."

Yeah. I run my own group (and help moderate S&L among others), and it got pretty crazy. In 2013/14 one of those groups was doing a massive read of Malazan book of the Fallen and the schedule was tight. I was reading Malazan Monday-Thursday, Sword & Laser Fri-Sun and any personal book (or NABCC pick) was often relegated to my audio selection.

I crashed pretty hard.

I'm pretty sure I know your "crazy psycho group" because I think there is some overlap with members of my side reads group. I can't read fast enough to keep up with some of the people on good reads. I just like being able to discuss a variety of books, even if it's only with 1-5 other people.

Yeah, you know some of them because I saw that Malazan read going around :)

Sarah Anne wrote: "Yeah, you know some of them because I saw that Malazan read going around :)"

Yeah, my side reads group actually started out of the Malazan group.

There was a thread on other stuff to read like Malazan and someone mentioned Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, and we kind of needed a place to discuss it, so I made one.

3.5 years later we're just shy of 600 members and have done about 120 reads. I'm pretty sure your group did 120 reads in the first month or two. :-D

Of course the active participation is much lower, but the group is still going, and is my main place to discuss books these days.

We're 1.5 years and only 67 members but it dominates my notifications. There are usually about 45 reads per month. I also started it because I needed a place to discuss books with two separate groups of friends. I actually got to where I would invite people to join and apologize for inviting them at the same time.

Side reads are a lot of fun, though. It's nice to have reading company.

Yeah. I had some people suggesting I ask to join, but I just don't have the time. I'd feel too overwhelmed.

If not for audiobooks, I'd hardly get through any books.

Stoyan wrote: "Ok this is probably ambitious but I plan to read ALL Stephen King has ever written in the next 2 years. Accordingly, I started Carrie today, the first of his novels. I've read some of his works but..."

Ha! Ambitious indeed. My husband just embarked on this. He's reading all of them in the order they were written :)

Finished Station Eleven (very good indeed), and am not taking a fluff break to read Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries.

Sarah Anne wrote: "My longest audiobook was 48 hours but it mistakenly repeated three chapters so it was 52. Unfortunately it was such a confusing book anyway that I listened to two of the duplicate chapters."

What book was it? I want to know so I can avoid it ;)

Michele wrote: "What book was it? I want to know so I can avoid it ;)"

It was The Recognitions by William Gaddis. It's not one I would be likely to recommend. Apparently he had a strong influence on Thomas Pynchon and I would have to say it shows.

Sarah Anne wrote: "Apparently he had a strong influence on Thomas Pynchon and I would have to say it shows. "

Heh...

Here is my review of The Last Kingdom.

Juniper Green wrote: "Reading We Are Legion (We Are Bob). Fun, with a healthy dose of hard science."

Just picked this one up on audible. Looking forward to it.

Finished Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries. Next up I think I will try Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain.

I'll be curious to see what you think of Cosmos Latinos. That looks interesting.

Sarah Anne wrote: "I'll be curious to see what you think of Cosmos Latinos. That looks interesting."

The introduction alone is already worth the read -- tons of great info about the development of sci fi in Latin America, why it took a different direction from Anglo sci fi, how its roots in the historical experiences of the region shaped the themes and topics, etc. Makes me wish I were fluent in Spanish and/or Portuguese so I could read more than just the few examples given here.

Finished Carrie and started Way Station... have a lot of nonfiction to read so my time for fiction is kinda limited right now.

I returned the brand new Moonglow by Michael Chabon, without finishing it. I enjoyed the first 40 % of it, or so.

I've now started The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Julia wrote: "I returned the brand new Moonglow by Michael Chabon, without finishing it. I enjoyed the first 40 % of it, or so.
..."

Uh-oh, I just bought that.

Julia wrote: "I've now started The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin"

Ah, so good! I love her Earthsea books.

Started Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang a few days ago as well as Practical Demonkeeping and The Time Machine.

Julia wrote: "I returned the brand new Moonglow by Michael Chabon, without finishing it. I enjoyed the first 40 % of it, or so.

I've now started The Tombs of Atuan by ..."

I liked that one much better than the first one:)

I finished listening to Ahsoka. It was really short, but enjoyable (My Review).

I read The Wall of Storms. I really enjoyed it, though it is probably not for everyone.

My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Next I am finally getting to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and then Babylon's Ashes. If I can finish both by the end of the year I will be happy.

I'm dying a truly remarkable job of not reading a damn thing at the moment.

I'm so looking forward to BABYLON'S ASHES!!

Julia wrote: "I returned the brand newMoonglow by Michael Chabon, without finishing it. I enjoyed the first 40 % of it, or so.
..."

Sarah Anne wrote: Uh-oh, I just bought that.

Clarification: I returned it to the library because it is a new book that was past due. I was quite pleased by what I read of it.

Since my last post, I’ve read:

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. I didn’t realize when I started reading it that I’d picked a very appropriate time of the year for it. I enjoyed it, although there were some annoyances here and there. Even though this is classified as horror, I didn’t find it scary at all. My review.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. The story had a cool premise, and was entertaining at times, but something about the execution kept me from ever feeling completely engrossed in it. My review.

Jingo, the 4th book in the Watch subseries of Discworld. The Watch books are definitely growing on me. I didn’t care for them at first, but now I think it’s my second favorite subseries after Witches. My review.

John Dies at the End by David Wong. This one was a lot of fun. I’d always been curious about it because of the title, which stuck out to me every time I was browsing titles from our bookshelf. The story is a little crazy and the main characters are immature and crude, but there’s some genuine humor and cleverness in there too and the story completely absorbed me. My review.

I’m getting ready to start This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It, the sequel to John Dies at the End.

Julia wrote: "Clarification: I returned it to the library because it is a new book that was past due. I was quite pleased by what I read of it...."

Phew.

I'm listening to The Island of Dr. Moreau and still reading The Tombs of Atuan.

Well so far so good on my Stephen King project ... finished Carrie and Cujo .. on to The Shining. I am finishing a major research project and King is a really good way to rest mentally from all the nonfiction reading and writing.

Reading Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis. It is a fun, light read. Needed that after The Grace of Kings. My favorite story so far is Newsletter. I love Willis's wit and humor. I had never heard of her before joining this group. She is a favorite now.
At the end or the book she has recommendations for 12 Christmas Reads and 12 movies to watch.

Ellen wrote: "Reading Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis. It is a fun, light read. Needed that after The Grace of Kings. My favorite story so far is ..."

I am about to start Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. I am a big Connie Willis fan ever since I first read Doomsday Book

Here is my review of The Pale Horseman

I just finished The Explorer by James Smythe. It was absolutely excellent and I'm bummed it sat on my shelves for a year waiting for me. At least it stuck around.

I also finished a reread of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. This was my second time reading and my first time listening. I loved the audio and I found that I enjoyed the book more the second time around.