SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Here are a Dozen Good Reasons to RATB:


1. 12 months in a year; 12 years of SFFBC!
2. Books are the perfect fashion accessory.
3. Discussion topics for talking with your book friends.
4. Dopamine boost every time you finish a book.
5. Motivation to get out of a mid-year reading slump.
6. Intentional diversification of your reading.
7. Excuses to hoard more books.
8. Reasons to schedule me (book) time.
9. Permission to necro-post on a ‘dead’ book thread.
10. Lessen decision fatigue by narrowing your list of potential books to read next.
11. Bragging rights when you enter the next tier of the imaginary club house.
12. And where else will you find quality tested science-fiction and fantasy reads?

Excuses are a dime a dozen, so don’t utter them… Sign up (after January 1, 2025) and Read All The Books from the SFFBC bookshelf!

Sign up for the challenge here on January 1st.
Other challenges in here.
Personal challenge threads here.
Find all the different ways to see what's on the group shelf in Current Events.
Challenge on TSG: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading...

Hopefully I can read them all! (only books on the SFFBC shelves)
2025: Read All The Books.
Progress: 0/12

Legends & Lattes
Piranesi
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
We Are Satellites
The Way of Kings
Spinning Silver
The Poppy War
The Invisible Library
The Night Circus
The Obelisk Gate
The Passage
The Girl with All the Gifts

I will total either 10 or 11 in 2024, depending on how quickly I can complete the Radch trilogy. Let's try to do a little better in 2025:

01. Neuromancer ;
xx. Count Zero;
xx. Mona Lisa Overdrive;
02. The Diamond Age;
03. The Once and Future King;
04. The Last Unicorn: Deluxe Edition;
05. Provenance;
06. The Raven Tower;
07. Piranesi;
08. [...]

Some are leftovers from last year's rereads; other are personal projects, mostly standalone. I'd also like to get into Neal Stephenson and Rivers Solomon, just to name a couple.

I think I will aim to read 15 for this 2025 challenge. I usually wind up with a decent mix of current and past years reads, and I will work on decreasing my pile of actually-owned books too.

15/15

1) Winter Tide
2) Iron Widow
3) The Last Unicorn
4) The Time Machine
5) Slaughterhouse-Five
6) To Shape a Dragon's Breath
7) Early Riser
8) You Sexy Thing
9) Witch King
10) Our Wives Under the Sea
11) Dead Silence
12) The Teller of Small Fortunes
13) Venomous Lumpsucker
14) The Witch's Heart.
15) World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

I'm going to try to read all the rereads this year and at least 1 BOTM... So 24.

here's my 12

Neuromancer by William Gibson
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis = I just purchased this book this year and this will be my first digital read of the book
Foundation by Isaac Asimov = ditto
Homeland by R.A. Salvatore
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Semiosis by Sue Burke
The Wolf in the Whale by Jordanna Max Brodsky
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

I think I'm going to make my official goal for this 25 books again but see if I can get nearer to 36 in total.

Do only books on the SFFBC shelves count? Edit: Mods say yes, and I can happily work with that.

I sign up for 24 books.

1. These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs
✔️2. Among Others by Jo Walton
✔️3. The Children of Gods and Fighting Men by Shauna Lawless
✔️4. The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
5. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
✔️6. A Master of Djinn by P, Djèlí Clark
7. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
✔️8. An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
✔️9. Witchmark by C.L. Polk
10. Semiosis by Sue Burke
11. The Changeling by Victor LaValle
12. The Sea of Rust by Robert C. Cargill
✔️13. Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger
14. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
15. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
✔️16. The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
✔️17. Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
18. Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
✔️19. Our Wives Under the Sea bu Julie Armfield
✔️20. Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi
✔️21. Lost Ark Dreaming by Suya Davies Okungbowa
✔️22. To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
✔️23. You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo
✔️24. The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan

This is a placeholder. I'll make the list later. It didn't save for me, and it's like 3:30 in the morning.

CJ wrote: "Do only books on the SFFBC shelves count?"

For this challenge, yes. With the penultimate goal to read every book on our shelf.

I will be rereading a lot this year, and will definitely sign up for this one.

Read All The Books!

/12

2025 Read All the Books 12: Books by the Dozen

Here are a Dozen Good Reasons to RATB:


✅ Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree - 01.11.2025
✅ Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez - 02.02.2025
✅ Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi - 02.08.2025
✅Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - 02.12.2025
✅The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean - 03.05.2025
✅ The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant by Drew Hayes - 03.16.2025
✅The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo - 03.24.2025
✅How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu - 03.24.2025
✅Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow - 03.25.2025
✅ Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill - 04.05.2025
✅ White Cat by Holly Black - 04.05.2025
✅Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa - 04.18.2025
✅A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan - 04.25.2025
✅Witch King by Martha Wells - 05.03.2025
✅The City & the City by China Miéville - 05.11.2025

I plan on listening to 12 books for the challenge.

1. Red Sister book 1
2. Neverwhere
3. The Fifth Season book 1
4. The Stand
5. The Gunslinger book 1
6. Night Watch book 1
7. Mexican Gothic
8. American Gods
9. Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
10. The Terror
11. The Shadow of the Torturer book 1
12. The Ninth Rain book 1

Bonus books:

I'm going to try for this one

1. The Ninth Rain
2. The Bone Ships
3. The Aeronaut's Windlass
4. Academ's Fury
5. The Magicians' Guild
6. Magician: Apprentice
7. Black Sun
8. Blood Song
9. The Crown Conspiracy
10. Daughter of the Moon Goddess
11. The Way of Shadows
12. The Dragonbone Chair

I still have plenty of our shelf books that I own and should read, but I will aim low, for 12 books this year.

Here’s a my list!

✅1. Our Wives Under the Sea
✅2. The Poppy War
3. The Stars My Destination
4. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
5. Elantris
6. To Say Nothing of the Dog
7. Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
8. The City & the City
9. The Sword of Kaigen
✅10. The Space Between Worlds
11. Catfishing on CatNet
12. Reap the Wild Wind

The first 7 I’m quite likely to read, since they are already scheduled. But since I’m a pretty moody reader, I reserve the right to add or swap any of the, really.

I'll put down 10 as my goal again!

Here's the slightly-more-than-10 books that I'm prioritising (maybe kick off 2025 with a couple of re-reads of classics).

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke (re-read)
Neuromancer by William Gibson (re-read)
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Sabriel by Garth Nix
Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley
Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio (want to read all of Sun Eater in 2025!)
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (re-read as I want to read the rest of the series)
Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

Hello! I'm a noobie here to the group so it's nice to meet you all. 😊 I'm definitely partaking in this challenge.

My 12

1. A Study in Drowning - Ava Reid
2. Kappa - Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
3. The Night Country - Melissa Albert
4. The Cat Who Saved Books - Sosuke Natsukawa
5. Fairy Tale - Stephen King
6. Kaibyo: the Supernatural Cats of Japan - Zack Davisson
7. Wintersong - S. Jae-Jones
8. Stardust - Neil Gaiman
9. Pseudotooth - Verity Holloway
10. The Coven - Harper L Woods
11. Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales - Heather Fawcett
12. Immortal - Sue Lynn Tan

Reminder to people, especially newer members bc you might not know, there is an actual GR Challenge you can (should! because it's good!) sign up for. It tracks your progress and %, and shows the book covers, so it's fun to look at. Others can look at it too.

https://www.goodreads.com/challenges/...

Get to it from the link in the first post of this thread where it says
Sign up for the challenge here on January 1st.
or from any SFFBC home/group page under Challenges.

Put in your goal, 12 or 25 or whatever, and point it at a special shelf, e.g.
challenge-sffbc-books-2025.

sweet! thanks for the reminder that the challenge tracker is now open with the new year!

HeyT wrote: "I think I'm going to make my official goal for this 25 books again but see if I can get nearer to 36 in total."

HeyT do you still do your Random Number generator? I often wonder how people choose which books to read next.
Also, will YouKneek be back this year?

Well, I will shoot for 25. Starting with A Natural History of Dragons and then probably Empire of Silence

Bonnie wrote: "Reminder to people, especially newer members bc you might not know, there is an actual GR Challenge you can (should! because it's good!) sign up for. It tracks your progress and %, and shows the bo..."

this step always leads to revisions on my part so here's the first one:

Remove Homeland by R.A. Salvatore putting off my Drizzt read for another year and adding Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes because I'm also using it for the TBR challenge

Nope belay that as I'm committed to a Buddy Read somewhere with that book

so I'll commit to 13 for this challenge now

ETA: 15 now as I'm reading the following for challenges

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
and
The Path of Thorns by A.G. Slatter

sighs

Chelsie wrote: "Hello! I'm a noobie here to the group so it's nice to meet you all. 😊 I'm definitely partaking in this challenge.

My 12

1. A Study in Drowning - Ava Reid
2. Kappa - Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
3. The Nig..."

Hi Chelsie! Great that you would like to join us! I’m afraid, that you seem to have ,is understood the challenge. This one is for reading (all) the books on the book club’s (former group reads) bookshelf, and none of the books you listed are on it. You can find the book shelf here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

Looking forward to your choices!

I updated my placeholder post with my list above! https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Bonnie wrote: "HeyT do you still do your Random Number generator? I often wonder how p..."

I had to cut back on how many RNG books I read a month because I had to add in my work book club book. BUT I still participate in BookSpin on Litsy which is like RNG because you make a list and someone pulls two numbers out of a hat each month. My BookSpin list is made up of SFFBC backlist books though.

Ohhh I started Homeland yesterday but just saw in Allison's message to us all that it's a re-read from 15th onward :)

Will hold fire there with it and start something else later/tomorrow!

You can start whenever!

Steve, that's when the discussion is scheduled to start. If you've already finished reading it by then, so much the better!

what they said! :)

Ah, thought it was more live than that. Sweet, no swaps then!

Here is my starting list for this challenge:

1. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
2. Dune by Frank Herbert
✔️3. Storm Front by Jim Butcher
✔️4. Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
5. Red Mars by Kim Robinson
6. Redshirts by John Scalzi
✔️7. Silent Tower by Barbara Hambly
8. Black Company by Glen Cook
✔️9. Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
✔️10. Island in the Sea of Time by SM Stirling
✔️11. Against the Tide of Years by SM Stirling
✔️12. On the Oceans of Eternity by SM Stirling

I am sure there will be more. And here they are:
✔️13. Neuromancer by William Gibson
✔️14. Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton

As a group, we also fully of approve of necro-posting on any book thread.

Count me in for 12 RATBs in 2025.

These are on the short list so far.... way more than 12, but let's see what gets read.
Six of Crows
Stars My Destination
Sheep Look Up
War for the Oaks
Aeronaut's Windlass
Kushiel's Dart
Yiddish Policeman's Union
Forty Thousand in Gehenna
Leviathan Wakes
Haze
Magic of Recluce
Speed of Dark
Boneshaker
Zodiac
Island of Dr. Moreau
City of Bones
Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe
Blackout
To Say Nothing of the Dog

CBRetriever wrote: "Bonnie wrote: "Reminder to people, especially newer members bc you might not know, there is an actual GR Challenge you can (should! because it's good!) sign up for. It tracks your progress and %, a..."

I have come to acceptance that being a moody reader and what I plan on January will change several times throughout the year. I don’t see it as a problem. The fun for me is in the planning and then the reading, even if the planning gets scrapped,

I didn’t include as many books from the group shelf in my other challenges this year, so this year I am only going to aim for 12 for the challenge and see what happens. I like to have the option to read what suits me in the moment, so I’m not going to plan ahead (aside from the ones I already have on my TBR and Fantasy Team lists - and even those may change).

Can I still sign up for the challenge? It said 1:st of January but I didn't discover it until the 2:d and even though I signed up I can't see my name on the Signing Up page.

Wha... Orlando is on our group shelf? I missed that.

Of course you can join, Nike! Just remember this is the one for book club books, so some of these might count for other challenges but not this one :)

Nike wrote: "Can I still sign up for the challenge? It said 1:st of January but I didn't discover it until the 2:d and even though I signed up I can't see my name on the Signing Up page."

Do you mean the challenge tracker page? It doesn't show everyone, it's buggy like that. I don't think it'll ever show your own tracker on the list, but at the top you should be able to see if you've successfully signed up! If you haven't signed up, it'll say "I want to read __ books for this challenge." and if you have, it'll show your tracker.

And yes, you can still sign up! Jan 1st is the first day you can, but you can do so all the way up to Dec 31st :)

Anna wrote: "Nike wrote: "Can I still sign up for the challenge? It said 1:st of January but I didn't discover it until the 2:d and even though I signed up I can't see my name on the Signing Up page."

Do you m..."

Ok, then I get it. Yes, I can see it on top. Thank you (⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)

Allison wrote: "Of course you can join, Nike! Just remember this is the one for book club books, so some of these might count for other challenges but not this one :)"


Aha, thanks for telling me!

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "Wha... Orlando is on our group shelf? I missed that."

I guess it's me who haven't quite understood the rules correctly.

Allison wrote: "Of course you can join, Nike! Just remember this is the one for book club books, so some of these might count for other challenges but not this one :)"

I realise now that I joined the wrong challenge, lol! But now I've found the right one.

I will aim form 12 but a lot of the, are already on my to read list so I may end up with more!
1. The Way of Kings
2. Six Wakes
3. Sphere
4. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
5. Children of Time
6. Redshirts
7. The Lathe of Heaven
8. Snow Crash
9. Leviathan Wakes
10. The Martian
11. Recursion
12. Stories of Your Life and Others

It seems so strange, to me, of naming the titles
/specific books vs. number ahead of time. I upgraded my reading goal last year to 250+, and almost reached 300. However, I’m hoping to not be stuck in bed all year, so lowest expectations for 2025.

Per my recent tradition, I’ll start my goal at 100 books read; then I’ll increase/decrease that number depending on my health & external activities opportunities.

I think I’m ~5/100 so far this year.

Mad [Mercurial] Milliner wrote: "It seems so strange, to me, of naming the titles
/specific books vs. number ahead of time. I upgraded my reading goal last year to 250+, and almost reached 300. However, I’m hoping to not be stuck ..."

planning

finished first one in this list

✔️ Foundation by Isaac Asimov = I just purchased this book last year and this will be my first digital read of the book

2025 Read All The Books

Progress: 6/12

✅ 1. The House in the Cerulean Sea -- 6/8/25
✅ 2. Remarkably Bright Creatures -- 8/23/25
✅ 3. Our Share of Night -- 9/18/25
✅ 4. The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant: Fred the Vampire Accountant #1 -- 10/15/25
✅ 5. One Hundred Years of Solitude -- 11/14/25
✅ 6. Esperance -- 11/16/25
7. The Power —
8. Strange the Dreamers —
9. Sea of Rust —
10. The Killing Moon —
11. A Memory Called Empire —
12. The Traitor Baru Cormorant —

oo Kel, you've got some weighty books there!

I will try to read all the books, this year. In 2023 and 2024, this proved to be a challenge, so it is an appropriate goal.