SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
SciFi and Fantasy Book Challenge
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2022 Get to Know You Challenge
This sounds like a fun challenge to try. I only wonder at the chaotic state of my own bookshelves and old ratings, etc.I'll have to set aside time to do my own shelf-stalking, but I'll bookmark this one to look at later.
Hank wrote: "Africa Amazing Africa: Country by Country was indeed amazing, thanks Cheryl! I too gave it 5 stars."Oh I'm so glad you agree!
Ryan, I've seen you mention it before so I've put Empire of the Ants on my agenda. I'm not sure yet when I'll start it but probably won't be until next month.
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That would be great. I'll let you know.
2022 Get to Know You ChallengeI'll start doing this challenge with Gabi's books.
5 star read - Red Mars
2 star read - The Gospel of Loki
And Kristenelle's
5 star - Vita Nostra or The Fifth Season
2 star - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (although I think I will also not like this book)
And Karen's
5 star -The Sword of Kaigen
2 star - Tender Is the Night or The Host
Ryan wrote: "Let me know when you start it and I may be able to (re)read it with you!"I'm just about through the stack I was working on so I'm open to whatever works with your schedule if you still want to do a buddy read for Empire of the Ants.
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I'm just about through the stack I was working on so I'm open to whatever works with your schedule if you sti..."
I'm tempted to start it tonight despite having other books to read. Don't have many library holds or loans eating up much of my reading time in March so I'm good to go whenever you are. I'm curious to know if the idea of the story in my head matches the actual story.
Ryan wrote: "I'm tempted to start it tonight despite having other books to read. Don't have many library holds or loans eating up much of my reading time in March so I'm good to go whenever you are. I'm curious to know if the idea of the story in my head matches the actual story."I started a buddy read post in case you succumb to temptation. Whenever you're ready is fine with me.
Looks like the perfect challenge for someone who's joined the party 7 months late )))*went to peruse the bookshelves and reviews*
It feels a bit like cheating, because one book I started reading yesterday and the other is planned for the next week, so maybe I'll be back for a second round in autumn )))So, I'd like to see how DivaDiane's and my tastes really compare. The GR comparing tool gives us 70%, but a quick look though the "read" shelf yielded some interesting diversities )))
5 stars - Wild Seed
2 stars - The Silmarillion
I’m honored that you chose me! And my bookshelf. I am surprised that I had the audacity to give the Silmarillion only 2 stars! But I do remember my biggest takeaway being that I was simply bored most of the time. It felt a bit like reading Genesis of the Bible. Endless lists of who begat who and unengaging stories.
And I’m all for cheating in situations like this! Kill two (or 4 in this case!) birds with one (two) stones!!
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Since I am pretty caught up on my other challenges for the year I took a look at this and it sounds fun. I do have a question, does it recharge at the end of the year, or is it just an ongoing/unlimited challenge?
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Ryan wrote: "I wasn't planning on doing the challenge again officially, but I do like having somewhere specifically for finding a like minded reader or someone whose tastes help individuals find books they'll l..."Understand that.
I just found this thread. Is anyone taking the approach of naming 5-star reads and 2-star reads from their own bookshelves as the best examples of their taste for the others here to read? (Is that question making sense?)If so, I have some titles in mind…
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Here are the books from the SFFBC shelf that I’ve rated 2 stars:The Eye of the World
Alif the Unseen
Station Eleven
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Pawn of Prophecy
Planetfall
All You Need Is Kill
The Mere Wife
The Many-Colored Land
The Ten Thousand Doors of January
The Ghost Bride
Shadowshaper
Moon of the Crusted Snow
I wrote reviews for all of these that describe what I disliked about them.
Oh wow. You are definitely better at low ratings than I am.
DivaDiane wrote: "Oh wow. You are definitely better at low ratings than I am."There was a time, I think, when I was a bit more reluctant to drop my ratings below 3 stars, but as I’ve been devouring more and more books over the last four years than I ever have — even when I was a book-devouring youngster — the gulf between what works for me and what doesn’t has only grown wider and wider. And when I read books that require me to grit my teeth to get through them, unless there’s something compelling or exciting that helps balance out that frustration, it’s 2 stars for me. (I’ve only rated one book 1 star: the atrocious, hot steaming pile of garbage The Silent Patient.)
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I need to read your review of that when I'm home.
Allison wrote: "well now you HAVE to do the 5 stars so we can do an analysis =P"Happily! Here are my 5-star reads of books from the SFFBC shelf, more or less in order of having read them:
Slaughterhouse-Five
Flowers for Algernon
Doomsday Book
Red Mars
Cat's Cradle
The Dispossessed
The Handmaid's Tale
The Left Hand of Darkness
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
Parable of the Sower
The Word for World Is Forest
Assassin's Apprentice
The Fifth Season
The Obelisk Gate
All the Birds in the Sky
Among Others
Swords and Deviltry
Tigana
Perdido Street Station
Too Like the Lightning
The Windup Girl
A Closed and Common Orbit
Ship of Magic
Dawn
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
I didn’t write reviews for a few of the books I read long before Goodreads was a thing, but I’ll happily discuss any of them with any of you.
Ryan wrote: "I'm so glad to see Station Eleven on that list. Less so about The Mere Wife :/I need to read your review of that when I'm home."
Oh, I was definitely an outlier in these parts on The Mere Wife, but man it did not work for me. I enjoyed a story of hers I read in an anthology, though. I think she’s a gifted writer for sure.
Re: The Mere Wife, I need to doubly disappoint you, Ryan.
Here are some non-group-shelf 2-star reads:White Teeth
The Da Vinci Code
Angels & Demons
A Little Life
Every Heart a Doorway
The Incendiaries
And some of my most-loved 5-star reads (in no particular order):
Birds of America: Stories
The Silence of the Lambs
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Downbelow Station
White Noise
Typical American
Ragtime
Cyteen
Little Children
The Black Prince
The Corrections
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
A Home at the End of the World
The Grapes of Wrath
East of Eden
Another Country
Anna Karenina
Disgrace
His Dark Materials
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lonesome Dove
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Color Purple
Interpreter of Maladies
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Salvage the Bones
The Art of Fielding
Black Leopard, Red Wolf
The Great Believers
Trust Exercise
Shuggie Bain
Eager to hear folks’ thoughts!
Ooh. Didn't realize we were going beyond SFF. I might have to list some of mine.(Although, a lot of it features on Anthony's lists already).
My curated selection of dearest, most fondly held, affecting, impressive or otherwise noteworthy 5-star (fiction) reads:The Dispossessed / The Left Hand of Darkness
Brideshead Revisited
Kafka on the Shore
The Overstory / Bewilderment
A Ladder to the Sky
A Home at the End of the World
Moominpappa at Sea / Moominsummer Madness / Moominvalley in November
Cyteen / Regenesis
The Martian Child
Everything Is Illuminated
The Black Prince
Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Tigana
The Brothers Lionheart
Shuggie Bain
When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One: Release 2.0
East of Eden
The Catcher in the Rye
Salvage the Bones
The Martian / Project Hail Mary
The Human Son
The Desperates
The Three-Body Problem
My Real Children
Too Like the Lightning / Seven Surrenders
A Closed and Common Orbit
Cage of Souls
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Humans
Piranesi
Birds of America
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Novel
My Brother and His Brother
Midnight Robber
The Coming Storm
I tend to 'drift away' from books if/when they prove unworthy of my attention, thus, my 'lesser' impressions are more often of the 'meh' variety, rather than passionate hate-reads. 2-star reads I can recall the reading of / can stand by:
The Secret History
Into the Drowning Deep
The Luminous Dead (rare passionate irk-read)
Gideon the Ninth
Warchild
Falling Free
The Many-Coloured Land
The Black Prism
Mission Child
The Mere Wife
The Silent Patient
The Need
Anthony wrote: "I just found this thread. Is anyone taking the approach of naming 5-star reads and 2-star reads from their own bookshelves as the best examples of their taste for the others here to read? (Is that ..."Reading through the thread I did see that being done a few times.
Anthony wrote: "DivaDiane wrote: "Oh wow. You are definitely better at low ratings than I am."There was a time, I think, when I was a bit more reluctant to drop my ratings below 3 stars, but as I’ve been devouri..."
I generally find the older I get the more I have an issue going over a three for things. So I have books that are kind of meh and books that I enjoyed in the same grouping. LOL
Jemppu, why is Mission Child so lowly rated? :o
Anna wrote: "Jemppu, why is Mission Child so lowly rated? :o"It was quite unconvincing in its apparent exploration, and wholly wasteful of the precise opportunity that further investment in the Finnic/Sámi(/Uralic?) elements, it but vaguely bothered to borrow for itself, would've allowed for that exploration.
The structure of the extended story did not offer it any support, either.
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I'll go read the ewview. (That's a typo, but clearly a negative review is called an ew-view! :D )I liked Mission Child, but there are a couple of reasons why I was primed to like it, one of them being the excellent blueberry muffins/croissants I lived on for the two days I spent reading the book. And the other being that almost all of my relatives were named in chapter one and then killed in horrible ways.
Five Star Books: Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour
A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge
A Night in the Lonesome October
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Dorsai!
Bank Shot
2BR02B
Leviathan Wakes
How Carriers Fought: Carrier Operations in WWII
Hexed in Texas: A Humorous Fantasy
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
Okay so the last one is actually a four, but oh well. As you can see, I do have a fairly large interest outside of the group theme.
Ryan wrote: "I really like Jemppu's Mission Child review. It put me off using the book on a poll."...still bothered, that you would do that without further investigating the book yourself.
Anna wrote: "...And the other being that almost all of my relatives were named in chapter one...."
"Uncle-Kari" definitely hit home for me on that regard.
OK I very much agree about the gendered pronoun thing making absolutely no sense, and I think I commented on that when I was reading it. (I spent two days in several coffeeshops reading the book, and sent so many screenshots to my family, and posted long musings about it to poor Allison.) But I was able to enjoy the book despite that, and some other minor quibbles I had. In fact I wish it was available on ebook because I want to reread it. I gave my copy to my brother (named in the book) who had it in his backpack during a rainstorm, and it's ruined :(edit: typo
Ones and Twos The Field Marshal's Revenge: The Breakdown of a Special Relationship
Odyssey of the Gods: The Alien History of Ancient Greece
Brave New WorldKilling Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General
Restoree
The Sirens of Titan
God of Tarot
Snow White and the Seven Samurai]
Hmm, seems I had more one-star books than I thought. Some of these are two start books.
Ryan wrote: "I wasn't planning on doing the challenge again officially, but I do like having somewhere specifically for finding a like minded reader or someone whose tastes help individuals find books they'll like. Those might sound like the same thing but occasionally you find someone whose tastes are the opposite to yours so a negative review from them may act as a recommendation to you and vice versa."
Yes, that's the way I use some reader's bookshelves nowadays. Anthony's 2 star list is a good example here. I've read all of those books par one, and some of my favourites are on there. So Anthony has become a sort of go-to reviewer for me where I take a look at those SFF books he didn't like :D.
Ha! It’s good to find our bellwethers sometimes! (I still enjoy the fact that occasionally our tastes converge!)
I forgot about this thread for ages and ages, but lo and behold, I have something to report! I picked DivaDiane for this challenge and am currently chuckling at the result - I LOVED Project Hail Mary, it was a no-brainer 5-star read. On the other hand, I've been trying and trying to get into Neuromancer and it's just not happening. Not as a book, not as an audiobook, it's just booooring and I can't be bothered to care about any of it. I'm seriously questioning my husband's taste in books at the moment.And as for my sorry history with Sarah J. Maas, which you asked about earlier, I was kind of hoping she'd improve, plus those books were brainless entertainment for me at the time. I finally gave up for good after trying and DNFing A Court of Silver Flames. That one soared way past my tolerance limit and I concluded this author just... wasn't for me.
Anthony wrote: "Ha! It’s good to find our bellwethers sometimes! (I still enjoy the fact that occasionally our tastes converge!)"That goes without question. Your 5 star list has a lot of books on it that I loved as well. (both referring to the SFFBC list, that's the one where we've read almost the same books) I can easily go with your recommendations.
Kirsi wrote: "I forgot about this thread for ages and ages, but lo and behold, I have something to report! I picked DivaDiane for this challenge and am currently chuckling at the result - I LOVED [book:Project H..."In the Neuromancer book, is the person reading it the author, if so find another reader.
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...still bothered, that you would do that without further investigating the book yourself.
"
Issues regarding availability basically ruled it out as an option before I had read your review. It was the hope that it was a well executed and novel idea that I could bring some attention to by adding it to a poll that your review killed. The five or so members that would have made the effort to read it may still discover Mission Childs existence by conversations like this.
I investigate plenty. :)
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I liked Mission Child, but there are a couple of reasons why I was primed to like it, one of them being the excellent blueberry muffins/croissants I lived on for the two days I spent reading the book. And the other being that almost all of my relatives were named in chapter one and then killed in horrible ways."
Well... we're certainly getting to know you. 8D
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