SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I made it to right when the city and the city discussion started and then my power went out. I’m not having much luck with these meetings so far.

TIL at this meeting, Gehenna is pronounced with a soft G at the start (as in George). I guess this is something that can happen when you read a word before ever hearing it. Same thing happened when I got to middle school math and my teacher said the word “finite”. I had always mentally read it with the same pronunciation as “infinite” without the “in”.

I’m also inspired to go back over all the months I’ve read with the club to see my ratings just out of curiosity. Wonder if the average is similar over the years, SF vs Fantasy ratings etc.

If you make a spreadsheet, please share it! :D

Oh no, Bill!! Was it your neighbor's tree hitting something? Please send them an invite to the next one so they can block out time on their calendars to be totally chill for an hour!

Christopher, I second what Anna said! Share the data!

Not sure the best way to present the sheet, but here's the top level data. Been a member since October 2015, for 56 months total (not counting June 2020 yet). I've read books on the list prior to that but for this I figured would be interesting to see how much I've done since I've been able to vote etc. I wasn't sure where to put DNF's here as the reasons are varied (not into it at the time, too busy, book due at library, etc.) so I didn't count them at all although some I wasn't into maybe should be 1's or 2's. I generally don't rate DNF's. What surprised me is how consistent I am between the two categories:

Fantasy -
Read: 33 (59%)
Average Rating: 3.2
5 star books: 7
1 star books: 2

Science Fiction -
Read: 32 (57%)
Average Rating : 3.5
5 star books: 7
1 star books: 2

The 5* books fwiw: The Stand, The Goblin Emperor, The Fifth Season, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Children of Time, The Night Circus, Ninefox GambitLord of Light, Among Others, Planetfall, Semiosis, The Raven and the Reindeer, The Just City

Allison wrote: "Oh no, Bill!! Was it your neighbor's tree hitting something? Please send them an invite to the next one so they can block out time on their calendars to be totally chill for an hour!"

Lol. I’m going to try to hold off another month of quarantine before I start on conspiracy theories. Also it never even occurred to me to jump onto my cell phone for the rest of the meeting.

I only caught a bit of it but the discussion on whether the city and the city was sf, fantasy or neither was interesting. It was something I was trying to figure out the whole book.

The books I have listed as being on the shelf, so it might be missing a few but it's what I've got!

Five star: 29
Four star: 59
Three star: 40
Two star: 12
One star: 10

Average is 3.56

ETA: lol, Bill! One more month should give you the data you need.

Since I joined the club

Five star: 21
Four star: 76
Three star: 62
Two star: 16
One star: 1

Average 3.57

I am unable to process statistics at this time due to scheduled daily maintenance, but I will add it to tomorrow’s set of scripts!

This distracted me from what was probably a completely unimportant task!

Fantasy
Five Star: 13
Four Star: 32
Three Star: 20
Two Star: 16
One Star: 8

Average 3.29

Sci-Fi
Five Star: 16
Four Star: 49
Three Star: 25
Two Star: 11
One Star: 12

Average 3.41

Five star reads
Fantasy:
Tigana
American Gods
The Final Empire
Under Heaven
Deathless
The Blade Itself
The Golem and the Jinni
The Last Wish
The Black Prism
Red Sister
Arcadia
The Night Circus
Touch

Sci-Fi:
Pushing Ice
Karen Memory
The Eyre Affair
Ancillary Sword
Annihilation
The Sparrow
Ancillary Justice
Blackout
The City & the City
Doomsday Book
The Word for World is Forest
Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Really?)
The Handmaid's Tale
Zodiac
Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep
Ender's Game (Another really?)

Apparently The Hollow Kingdom was my 200th book.

I’ve de-rated all OSC books. (I wonder if I’ll have to do that to JKR too. But that’s another thread, sorry.)

And yay for 200! That’s the booze level 🥳

And cake! Let's add cake, too!

Mmmmm cake!

I made cake pops today :) They look like little hostess cupcakes on a stick.

Perfect! We'll take 26,000!

Allison wrote: "Perfect! We'll take 26,000!"

48 take me about 3 hours...

so you'll be done for next month! haha

How cute! Are the lemons for those who’ve read too few group books? 😄

(The limes are obviously to put in the coconut)

I thought the limes went with the tequila.

As long as you drink it all up!

Ha!

Anna wrote: "How cute! Are the lemons for those who’ve read too few group books? 😄

(The limes are obviously to put in the coconut)"

lol. I set it on my dining table to take a photo and now you guys get to see what a mess it is!!!

Anna wrote: "As long as you drink it all up!"

Great thanks - now that is going to be in my head until I fall asleep tonight.

Welcome to the club! It’s the official SFFBC earworm! And you can blame it on YouKneeK 😊

Sarah wrote: "Apparently The Hollow Kingdom was my 200th book."

Congrats on 200 Sarah!

Congrats on the 200 mark, Sarah. We in the hundred club salute you.

Thanks for last night, folks, I had a blast.

Now that you all are talking about stats, it got me curious too.
I read 119 books. My current average rating for SF is 3.09 and for fantasy is 3.21.
So, I enjoyed most of them. At least 10 five-star books and 45 four-star books.
My rating for SF is quite even across the board. I've 16 two-star books for SF compared to only 7 for fantasy.

Is there an easy way of comparing your own books with the group bookshelf? And separating SF/Fantasy? And calculating averages? How is everyone doing it?

Easiest way to compare is the SFFBC account or the spreadsheet?

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Ryan wrote: "Is there an easy way of comparing your own books with the group bookshelf? And separating SF/Fantasy? And calculating averages? How is everyone doing it?"

I sort of brute forced it and just counted which is why mine is not separated by genre.

Yeah, I have shelves to keep track of the group reads I've read or am intending to read, and I just did a back of the napkin calculation on that.

And to follow up on my initial question of book club vs books one selects for oneself I looked at the 60 books on our shelf I had either read prior to joining the club or ones I specifically chose to read when I had extra time or a re-read was happening. My average there is 3.7 which is higher than the 3.35 for the 65 I read concurrently with the group but I think that makes sense as the latter are more forced upon me and less curated to my specific tastes. That said, the concurrent reads still have 21.5% of them rated as 5's and many that I never would have found myself so it's all worth it! Plus the fun of getting to be reading w/ a group and even for a bad book getting to commiserate has its own joys.

I use excel, but only to calculate the average. The rest I count manually from the group's shelves since it's already divided into SF and F. I think I made a mistake since the one in Anna's link (compare shelf) says I have 125 in common whereas I only count 119 read +3 TBR + 2 unrated - I knew it, I missed one book o_O

Christopher wrote: "Plus the fun of getting to be reading w/ a group and even for a bad book getting to commiserate has its own joys."

Completely agree there! I had so much entertainment with mine and Allison and everyone else's review for The Many-Colored Land

I have read less than 100 and for some reason some are showing up twice.

QQ - have we decided what to discuss next time? With partial reopening the better question might be - will there be another virtual book club?

I might need time to get on a waiting list at the library :-(

I find this a tiny bit interesting, only a tiny bit, because the differences are tiny, but there is clearly a trend!

My average rating:

All books on the shelf
SF 3.31
F 3.35

Since I've joined
SF 3.38
F 3.22

Since I've been a mod
SF 3.41
F 3.11

So the SF rating goes up the more control I have over the options, but at the same time the F rating goes down. Clearly I need to start working my magic on Allison's F poll options! :P

Ratings as they are right now, subject to change:

SF
5 - 15
4 - 33
3 - 25
2 - 20
1 - 6

F
5 - 14
4 - 18
3 - 37
2 - 13
1 - 2

I also noticed that I've read 99 group SF books, so whichever one I read next should be a good one to celebrate! Although I guess I've technically read it already, since I've read the July poll winner.

Sandy, that is the question! I don't mind either way. I like chatting with y'all, and also understand if life is getting busier now that we're moving towards a more normal setting. You all tell me what you want to do!

I missed this one- but I really love virtual book club. Just nice to hear from and see you all I think.

@Anna: 99 SF books, huh? Another one and you'll get even more access in the already accessible triple-digit club house. Maybe the holodeck.

@Sandy: I'd still want to have more, even though probably not as often since people would have more stuff to do. (Not me though, I'm game for any SFF zoom as long as it's not past 1 AM my time ;p)

Yes, we need to come up with prizes for hitting genre specific levelups! :D

I am in if there is another one so long as I can get the book.

The July rereads are The Fifth Season and The Bear and the Nightingale.

I’d love to continue with our virtual book club. Oh let’s discuss the Fifth Season!! I promise to have read it by then.

I might get around to calculating my average for group reads, but only all of them that I’ve read, because I’ve only been a member for a year and I never manage to read them when the group does anyway.

No wrong way to read with us! I'm good to keep going. Recording 1 vote for Fifth Season.

I figured out how to compare books: I have 70 books in common with the group, but without bookshelves or excel I guess there's no way to easily calculate averages and so forth?

Alright, I'm inspired to set up GR bookshelves - that's pretty self-explanatory. Any tips on how to set up a useful excel spreadsheet?

When will the books be set for July for first read books. Hope that makes sense - can't see of to find those. But maybe it is too early?

Today is the last day to vote for July's official group reads! At midnight GR time, we'll have our official winners.

Ryan check out the thread I linked for a spreadsheet of group books! 😊

Sandy wrote: "When will the books be set for July for first read books. Hope that makes sense - can't see of to find those. But maybe it is too early?"

The polls end on the 15th (today) so hop over there to see who is winning. It works the same way every month.