[EN World Book Club] Suggestions & Selectors

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Aren't the PKD items short stories? For now anyway we are going to stick with novels.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep & Man in the High Castle are both novels. Good ones, too.

Just to add another PKD novel to the list, how about UBIK ? It's one of my favorite novels of his.

 

[Sam]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep & Man in the High Castle are both novels. Good ones, too.

Just to add another PKD novel to the list, how about UBIK ? It's one of my favorite novels of his.

OK, added them. And the Swanwick book too. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[JoeBlank]

Re: Re: Re: [EN World Book Club] Suggestions & Selectors

I've got no problem with this schedule. After all, this is supposed to be an enjoyable exercise, not something that gives people stress. Unless anyone has any objection, I think this schedule should be adopted.

I dig the proposed six-week schedule.

Also, the earlier the next selection is announced the better. Some folks my have to use Amazon or another online source, which could create some lag time before they get to start reading.

If the full editorial board rotation is announced ahead of time, then selectors further down the list can go ahead and declare what book they intend to choose. This would give participants time to purchase books, and allow those who read slowly, or have less reading time, to get a head start.

I keep meaning to join the Science Fiction Book Club and if I knew some of our upcoming selections from the start it would make picking my five introductory books a great way to get going.

 

[JoeBlank]

A quick run thru the selections at the Science Fiction Book Club reveals that they don't have as many of our suggestions as I expected.

Note that some of these may be available in compilations, and my search did not find them. There are a couple of P.K. Dick compilations, but they only mentioned Androids by name.

+ indicates available at SFBC
- indicates not available at SFBC
_______________________________
Suggestions

• +Gods in Darkness, Karl Edward Wagner & Ken Kelly
• +The Scar, China Mieville
• -Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared Diamond
• -Caeser's Legion, Stephen Dando-Collins
• -Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas
• -Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
• -Huchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
• -20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
• -The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
• -The Sea-hawk, Rafael Sabatini
• -Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
• -Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
• -The Tower of Fear, Glen Cook
• -The White Company, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• -The Illiad, Homer
• -The Odyssey, Homer
• -Sailing to Sarantium, Guy Gavriel Kay
• -The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
• -The Anubis Gates,Tim Powers
• -The Moreau Omnibus, S. Andrew Swann
• -Men of Iron, Howard Pyle
• -The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
• -Enders Game, Orson Scott Card
• -The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, Dante Alighieri
• -All the Bells on Earth, James P. Blaylock
• +Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
• -Battlefield Earth, L. Ron Hubbard
• -Dracula, Bram Stoker
• -Beowulf, translator Seamus Heaney
• -Shogun, James Clavell
• -Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• -Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove
• -The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer
• -The Facts of Life, Graham Joyce
• -Life of Pi, Yann Martel
• +The Black Company, Glenn Cook
• -The Reader, Bernhard Schlink
• -To Reign In Hell, Steven Burst
• +Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
• +Dawn of Amber, John Betancourt
• +Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear
• -Voyage, Stephen Baxter
• +Evolution: A Novel, Stephen Baxter
• -Dream Park, Larry Niven & Steven Barnes
• -On Basilisk Station, David Weber
• -Island of Doctor Moreau, H.G. Wells
• -Rhapsody, Elizabeth Haydon
• -All Tomorrow's Parties, William Gibson
• -Neuromancer, William Gibson
• -The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
• -Sundiver, David Brin
• -Startide Rising, David Brin
• -Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
• -Foreigner, C. J. Cherryh
• -Legend, David Gemmell
• -Wyrm, Mark Fabi
• +Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Phillip K. Dick
• -Man in the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick
• -Ubik, Phillip K. Dick
• +Bones of the Earth, Michael Swanwick

 

[Dacileva]

Another:

I haven't read this one, but everything I've heard about it has been good; it was even the inspiration for one of the alien species in the Dark•Matter conspiracy setting for the Alternity game by TSR/WotC:

Blood Music, by Greg Bear.

And my less altruistic reason: I really want to read it.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

My Final Recommendation

This is the last book I'm going to recommend for a while, since the list is getting pretty long.

At The Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

This is actually a novella (approx. 100pages), but a great work nonetheless, and one worth discussing in a group setting. It's available in several editions, but the one I recommend is found in
The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories . This is the corrected text, with notes on the text in the back of the book. There are other stories in this volume as well, but Mountains of Madness is the only one I'd recommend reading as a group (for now )

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Re: Re: [EN World Book Club] Suggestions & Selectors

The number of different translations of these works into English are many and highly varied in quality. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a grand example of this -- many English translations leave out whole chapters and large blocks of text due to A) socialist messages or B) technical aspects that the editors think will bore the readers.

IF you are going to be using one of these works THEN you must make sure everyone is reading the same translation; to do otherwise is to invite disaster...

A suggestion for overcoming this problem, with regard to classic works that have been translated into English. I've found, both in classroom settings and in my own reading, that if a classic work is available in multiple editions, I tend to look for those published by Oxford University Press or Penguin Classics. They tend to be "true to the original" much more often than editions published by any number of publishers, as they are published with a critical eye towards accuracy and education.

 

[CCamfield]

Hey, I think I want in on this!

A couple of things:

The Black Company is by Glen Cook, not Glenn.

While it's a fabulous book, one of my favourites, I know that Cook's book The Tower of Fear is out of print. Is this going to be an issue for anyone in the club?


Depending on the answer to that, I have some suggestions:

Captain Blood by Raphael Sabatini (which I like better than The Sea Hawk)

A Gentleman of France by Stanley Weyman, a swashbuckler author who wrote in the 1890s.

I think Captain Blood is in print; both of these are available at Project Gutenberg. Also some time ago I created PDF versions of both of them

City of Bones by Martha Wells (out of print, but an excellent book and not too expensive I think to get as a paperback)

 

[Sam]

While it's a fabulous book, one of my favourites, I know that Cook's book The Tower of Fear is out of print. Is this going to be an issue for anyone in the club?

If it is out of print then it is not eligible for selection. Earlier on it was decided that if a book is not easily accessible (meaning can be ordered from Amazon without waiting for them to find a copy) then it would not be eligible.

Checking on Amazon for Tower of Fear shows the paperback shipping in 1-2 days.

 

[JoeBlank]

Just wanted to throw one last suggestions out there:


The Lions of Al-Rassan , by Guy Gavriel Kay

On Amazon for only $6.50, paperback.

What is the time frame again? Are we planning to have the first selection announced around August 15, with discussion to begin 6 weeks later? So the second selection would be announced by mid-September?

May I suggest that Sam go ahead and randomly select to order of the Selectors, and post the complete list in order? That way, if Selectors were to announce their selections ahead of time, readers could use the Science Fiction Book Club idea, or place a large enough order with Amazon to get free shipping. Or just start budgeting for their purchases.