SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I'm looking for GREAT BOOKS. Books with diverse authors, viewpoints, characters, settings and genres. Books you really want to share with someone because they are special to you culturally, or in terms of identity or which you are afraid to read alone because maybe they'll be emotional.

Not sure if it's great? That's OK! In the spirit of Inclusive Book Bingo and Amazin' Eights, books you really want to read from and/or for voices that don't get heard a lot in genre fiction are 100% acceptable to send!

Please message me up to 3 books each! I will then make a list of 13 books. Then, each month we'll offer a rose to the book of our choice. The one with the most roses will be read farewell, and we'll discuss it together.

What about the 13th you say? This is where some strategy comes in! The 13th book will be included on a poll in 2023 for the whole group! There are no losers here, we save the best for last.

As with Amazin' Eights, we'll start voting for which book to read on the 7th of each month.

Options:

Borderline
Fever Dream
Frankenstein in Baghdad
The Gilda Stories
Kea's Flight
Moon Called
My Soul to Keep
Stories of Your Life and Others
Strange Beasts of China
Terra Nullius
The Bear Whispers to Me
Native Tongue
Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Best edit that pic before the mob finds you 😉

What's wrong with the picture??

Oh, the app thing?

Here, app users:

I'm looking for GREAT BOOKS. Books with diverse authors, viewpoints, characters, settings and genres. Books you really want to share with someone because they are special to you culturally, or in terms of identity or which you are afraid to read alone because maybe they'll be emotional.

Not sure if it's great? That's OK! In the spirit of Inclusive Book Bingo and Amazin' Eights, books you really want to read from and/or for voices that don't get heard a lot in genre fiction are 100% acceptable to send!

Please message me up to 3 books each! I will then make a list of 13 books. Then, each month we'll offer a rose to the book of our choice. The one with the most roses will be read farewell, and we'll discuss it together.

What about the 13th you say? This is where some strategy comes in! The 13th book will be included on a poll in 2023 for the whole group! There are no losers here, we save the best for last.

As with Amazin' Eights, we'll start voting for which book to read on the 7th of each month.

Yes this one I don’t even see a pic. Just looks like a placeholder post 😉

I’m going to try to guess just on the title… hmm a game where we vote books off the island? Wait no …

Oooh I can see the picture AND words! 😁

haha I updated my post above! You should now see the text I intended. Sorry! I can't keep up with the ways the app sucks!

Do they need to already be released currently?

Anna wrote: "Best edit that pic before the mob finds you 😉"


Lol! I tried to post in your thread Anna, but I think you must have locked it when I tried to submit my comment. Your whole post was so exuberant until CBR burst your exclamating bubble!!

If a book is less than 3 months old it's almost guaranteed not out worldwide yet, unless the US is the last place to get it, which is really only with UK pub books. So I think it should be out by the end of January, latest. But I also expect to get more than 13 nominations, so I am going to be curating a bit based on things like availability.

I'd also be open to revisiting the remaining list in, say, June, in case anything glorious comes out :)

Great books are great! 🌹🌹🌹

Yeah...we work really hard on these things. I'm sorry they don't go perfect all the time, but please go easy on us! We are trying to make the most fun for the most people, on a time schedule, around all the other things happening in the world. Even fox AI aren't able to make the app anything other than utter tripe!

This idea is so fun. 😍 You guys are alarmingly creative.

I would like to put forward a dumb question- You said diverse settings and genres. Does that mean any genre is fine, not just SFF? Or do you want us to try to stay within SFF?

I’m very excited 😊 about this.

I just realized that when I add these books to the BR list they will be marked as DRs, so we’ll have BRs, RRs and DRs 😂 I wonder what new Rs we’ll introduce in 2023!

So ... you'll make a new list of 13 books each month or we'll have a 13 book list @ the start?

Or we messaging 3 books once or every month?

Sorry @Melanie! I guess great minds think alike 😂😂

PS: We love you Anna and Allison.
We only harass you bc you've piqued our interest so effectively!!!

lol! thank you all! Anna, I love that. i live affirmatively in ARR territory.

genres are still sff! I would consider non fic related to genre though, like Le Guins essays or Sagan's books. I'll take a vote on that. The idea is you'd send them to me all at once! But as i said I'd be willing to review come June :)

for some reason my mind is drawing a blank here. Do the normal criteria hold here:

Novels only, not collected stories?
SF&F = yes
Adult or possibly an older YA only?
not in our BotM list?

sff yes, not on bookshelf. everything else is up for grabs but will make the voting harder if they don't conform at least mostly with the club rules. I can suspend some rules, but a short story not in a collection might be a bridge too far, which means we'd have to read that for sure before the year end!

I was Thinking of something like Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson:

From the Publisher
This is a volume in the NESFA's Choice series. The objective of this series is to publish the "classic" works of neglected sf authors, and to keep these works in print.

I loved these stories about The People

Oh, this is such a neat idea. I've come up with a couple of potential, personal subjects that I can delve into lists for, already, and a third will surely not be far behind.

Books from previous BRs (that haven't also been BOTMs) are okay, just in case?

indeed!

If you know what you want to send, get 'em over to me! I'm constructing the list presently :)

This looks fun, looking forward to how it progresses. I really appreciate the range of books, authors, settings, etc. that I have been introduced to by the members in this group over the last several years.

Light from uncommon stars by Ryka Aoki

Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

I’m hoping these aren’t repeats from previous reads. I just joined the group so I’m not too familiar with what was read in the past. I’m excited to join the group and this sounds like a great idea. :)

great choices!

also welcome! glad to have you join in :D

Allison wrote: "great choices!"

we can do the books here rather than message you? I'll think of two more and post them here

Can these be literary Brazilian books with fantasy/magical realism elements or only SFF?

I thought they had to be messages, and I kind of liked the idea of Allison having 500 secret books and choosing 13 :D

I sent mine in private anyway.

Leticia i consider magical realism to be in the sff umbrella!

I'd prefer a message, because one of the things I'm kind of interested in is whether there are repeats, which I think people would unconsciously avoid if they see the book here

I am looking forward to seeing what our first book-quet looks like!

Thanks. Excited to join! Sorry I would have sent it privately but I didn’t see the option to when I click your name. Do you know how I would be able to send it privately for the future?

hmmm... you should be able through my profile but I don't know if the app is different. not a problem Rae'ven! I'd rather have the suggestions than risk losing some bc the messaging isn't working :)

Rae'ven, you're correct, Allison's profile doesn't have the message option! :o I wonder what fresh Goodreads hell this is?! Looks like all author profiles have that option removed?

So I guess congrats Allison, the social mod, you can no longer be messaged by members who haven't messaged you before. Oh joy, all the weirdos will come for me :D

edit: I hope it's just a setting they've flipped on everyone, like the previous message one? Maybe you can fix it yourself?

Oh, you, Goodreads. :|

I found an author profile I can message, so I think it's a setting! :)

Deleted post

NO!

Please no one message the mod! It says specifically in the profile not to do that.

And do not message me for things that Allison needs. I'm sure she'll be able to fix this once she has a minute to dig into it :)

wtaf! God this site bothers me sometimes. Rae'ven sorry to use you as a guinea pig but did you get the newsletter from me? are you able to respond to that?

look now please? I changed my settings from "friends and people in my groups" to "everyone" can message me.

Yep it's there :)

goodreads why do you cause me such pain when all I do is love you!

yep, it's there - I'll edit my post

All I can say is huh and I mean that both in English and in Finnish :D

When I messaged Allison yesterday, I had to go to the message tab and type her name in the compose message form. She and I are GR friends but there wasn’t an option to message her from her profile.