The Book Club thread

chebe

Hello everyone! This will be the main thread for checking on book club related info, like dates confirmation/cancelling, book titles and suggestions, etc. But do feel free to start other threads about specific books/topics as you wish.

Details of the book-club can be found on the blog.
But in short;
- we'll meet the last Friday of every month (except December)
- we'll read one book a month, to be choosen by popular vote
- we'll mostly be reading speculative fiction; sci-fi, cyberpunk, anything with a maker/hacker ethos, or that looks at consequences of new tech

The book for November is “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick, the book that inspired the ‘Bladerunner’ film. We will meet Friday, 25th November, from 7pm in TOG to chat about it, and pick another book.

Have fun

chebe

The first meeting has come and gone. You missed it? There was cake. Chocolate cake, and apple traybake. Homemade. You missed out. But, you can always pop around to the next one!

January 27th, 2012. That's a Friday, and we'll meet from 19:30, in tog as usual. (Just a reminder, on-street parking is free after 7pm in the locality, though also often popular.)

And the book, is Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon'.

I picked up a copy in Hodges Figgis, the only copy on display, and am told that nowhere else local seems to have a copy. This sadens me, but remember that most bookshops are happy to order in a book for you. And as always, there's online. Also google informs me that there are a couple of audiobooks out there, if that's more your thing.

But beware, my copy is 910 pages long. Luckily we've just over 8 weeks to read it, so depending on when you get your copy and crack it open, that's about 114 pages a week! Totally doable, right? *ahem* Okay, and remember, if you hate the book so much you can't even finish it, that's okay, it just means a more lively discussion!

Best get started

tdr

Chebe,
I now have the book. I had to get it from amazon. Its a long book but so far a very good read.

chebe

Okay... Em... Well... It's been a busy few weeks, and the book is quite large, so the next book club meeting will be in February, probably 24th. Sorry about this, just think it will help if we've all actually read the darned thing

chebe

Okay, end of college term draweth near. We're not quite starting up just yet, but I've had a few suggestions, so I'm putting them here for prosperity.

1. Limit book choices to those about or below 300 pages.
2. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
3. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance: more of a philoshopical book about how art people and technology/science people value things differently

As always, if you have suggestions feel free to add them here.

Tree

Frankenstein is excellent.
Iain M. Banks is pretty good too, Consider Phlebas is a good starting point (although people express more love for some of the later books, there's no consensus on that either )
Rendezvous with Rama is a classic.
PKD's various short stories each fall well under the 300page mark...
I love Robert Reed's Marrow also.
The Dispossesed by Ursula K. LeGuin is brilliant, anarcho-socialists ftw (I read another really great book about feminism and patriarchal/matriarchal societies, but can't for the life of me remember the name).
The Day of the Triffids (or a whole chunk of other stuff) by John Wyndham is great, really loved it.

Also, do graphic novels count for book club?

*please note i'll probably not reread the books and am even less likely to appear to book club, I am a terrible reader these days

tdr

Come on Tree, We might get you back reading

Tree

At this stage I get to read fiction at Xmas and on holidays. Other than that it's all non-fiction, mostly science, sometimes food/craft...

tdr

You need to go on more holidays so.