We already have a choice for September 2021 - @NeilNjae has picked out Vita Nostra , a Ukrainian novel that seems to defy easy explanation.

Here is a list of people who have been involved with the club in the last little while (if I have forgotten anyone, first of all apologies and secondly please could someone include them with a mention):

@Apocryphal
@BarnerCobblewood
@Bill_White
@Bilharzia
@Anat13
@Ray_Otus
@clash_bowley
@RichardAbbott
@dr_mitch
@NeilNjae
@rossum
@MARCC
@WildCard
@NeilNjae
@Michael_S_Miller
@Keith
@Jesseabe
@Morthrai
@RtG
@Alex
@Aonghais_MacInnes
@Doccowie
@BurnAfterRunning
@HowardAJ
@Maezar
@Jenny_Ritt
@matantisi
@Marcibis
@JADettman

Could anyone interested in picking out a book please reply on this thread (or directly to me / @Apocryphal ) before the end of August please. We can then find out who's doing which month. A list of books read up until summer 2018 can be found at this link https://www.ttrpbc.com/discussion/12/the-first-seven-years#latest

• there may be a more up to date list but I'm not sure where to find it...

There's a theme (which maybe not so many sf writers of the early post-war period were exploring) of the tendency of technology to alienate rather than bring together, so most of the stories are kind of dismal, though not dystopian or anything so explicit as that.

Are any of us fans of Bradbury and if so why? What am I missing? Or are there better starting points for his material?

September: Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, hosted by @NeilNjae
October: A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, hosted by @RichardAbbott
November: the Binti trilogy of novellas by Nnedi Okorafor, hosted by @clash_bowley

Our August read, with discussion almost upon us, is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, hosted by @BarnerCobblewood

I have added categories for each of those, so anyone who likes to get notifications can now add these to their preferences.

@NeilNjae if at some stage you could put an introductory post there with blurb or whatever that would be great.

I've been putting out content for this club for a long time now - including trying to drum up new members, cajoling people into joining, organizing rotations, reminding people when it's their turn, or what books we've already read, or how to manage their notification preferences. This year I'm also running the slow read (though to mixed reviews), and I've just had a monthly pick come and gone, with quite a good discussion between those few of us who showed up. Considering it was a milestone, a short book, an iconic book, and an easy read, I was quite disappointed that only 3 out of 7 people who indicated their interest bothered to show up to the discussion.

I love you all, but I think it's time I had a bit of a break from the organizational activity here. I'll still run the slow read (I hate to leave something unfinished) but it's high time someone else took over some of the other activities, whether that be one person or several. We already have 5 members with Mod level status, and everything around here can be handled at this level. If someone who isn't a mod would like to take over, I'm happy to make them a mod. There's no magic to it. Everyone can be a mod if they want.

With respect to the actual modding duties, there really isn't much to to - occasionally someone will request to join. All you have to do is make sure they're a real person and let them in. There's no spam. The only other mod activity is to set up the monthly discussion threads when new books are picked. As for running the regular club activities, no special status is needed. All you need to do is figure out who will go next and make sure they know when it's their turn.

I'm not planning to go away, and I will certainly read the June selection and continue with the slow read. However, at least until I get my appetite for organizing back again, I'm not going to do outreach and I may take the liberty of skipping a book here or there. If anyone wants to take over the organizing, I'll be here to help you.

Thanks,
Chris

We started this book club in January of 2011 with the reading of JRR Tolkien's Silmarillion, and went on from there to read many more books! Our first home was on the Roludo gaming forum, then we moved to G+ where we picked up a big batch of new members, and in 2018 we moved here, to our own dedicated forum. This January we'll be reading (for some, re-reading) Sleep Donation by Karen Russell, and this will mark the end of our 9th year. This will be our 96th* monthly book selection. If we add in the 9 books we've read so far as 'slow reads', we're at 105 books in total! We;ve done well as a club - we still have most of our original members, and are continuing to grow slowly with the addition of new ones.

Here's what we've got on tap for the beginning of 2021:

NEXT FEW DAYS

Discussion of our December pick (book #95) will begin tomorrow, hosted by @RichardAbbott . This is a reading of Ted Chiang's short story Story Of Your Life, in conjunction with a viewing of the film Arrival, which was based on the story. By extension, I assume we'll also be discussing some of the other stories in Ted Chiang's collection: Stories Of Your Life And Others.
Introduction: https://www.ttrpbc.com/discussion/508/december-story-choice-story-of-your-life-arrival#latest
Discussions: https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/95-(december-2020)-stories-of-your-life-arrival-by-ted-chiang

JANUARY

In January, @WildCard will be hosting the discussion of our 96th book - Sleep Donation, by Karen Russell. This is actually the second time we'll be reading this book - it was also pick number 21!

Trish Edgewater is the Slumber Corps’ top recruiter. On the phone, at a specially organized Sleep Drive, even in a supermarket parking lot: Trish can get even the most reluctant healthy dreamer to donate sleep to an insomniac in crisis–one of hundreds of thousands of people who have totally lost the ability to sleep. Trish cries, she shakes, she shows potential donors a picture of her deceased sister, Dori: one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia plague that has swept the globe.

Run by the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers, the Slumber Corps is at the forefront of the fight against this deadly new disease. But when Trish is confronted by “Baby A,” the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious “Donor Y,” whose horrific infectious nightmares are threatening to sweep through the precious sleep supply, her faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter.

@WildCard 's introduction can be found, here: https://www.ttrpbc.com/discussion/517/96-january-2021-book-nomination-sleep-donation#latest
Look for discussions to begin around the end of January. They'll be posted here: https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/96-(january-2021)-sleep-donation-by-karen-russell

FEBRUARY

In February, one of our most recent members, @BurnAfterRunning (host of the gaming blog of the same name, btw) has expressed an interest in running a Terry Pratchett book - an author we haven't yet tackled here at the club. Look for an announcement, or perhaps a discussion thread, to begin soon. (EDIT: And the pick is Mort )

COMING SOON

And, if monthly readings aren't enough - or indeed, if they are too much! - we've started discussing a new Slow Read for 2021. Slow Read's allow us to tackle longer works, but spread out over a much longer time with weekly discussions. For more on this, I point you to the ongoing discussion thread: https://www.ttrpbc.com/discussion/520/2021-slow-read
(EDIT: And the pick is The Dream Archipelago by Christopher Priest

Here's to a great 10th year, everyone!

This book club was founded in the 11th century by an enthusiastic and lettered group of Knights, all of whom were direct descendants of knights who held positions at the round table of Arthur, and who has managed to hold their lands and libraries through various invasions. 2021 will mark the beginning of our 10th century of reading, and we've come a long way! Just look at this timeline of key events:

1021 Book Club Founded as the 'Venatus est Scriptor Libro Clava'
1067 Emile do Boron becomes the 5th president of the club
1135 Book club moves to St Malo, France after a dispute between factions leads to anarchy in book selection process.
1347 Membership increases dramastically as plague forces people to stay home from work.
1686 Club President François-Saturnin Lascaris d'Urfé proposes moving the club to Canada, but the motion is voted down after someone points out that there are few things more hurtful than telling your club members that you prefer the company of Canadians.
2011 Club does finally move to Canada, but only under the condition that it be 'online'. Roludo Book Club opens.
2016 Club moves to G+
2018 Club moved to dedicated forum hosted in New Orlean's, Louisiana.

COMING THIS YEAR TO THE ROYAL TTRPBC:

JANUARY

In January, @WildCard will be hosting the discussion of our 960th book - Go To Sleep, Russell The Sheep

Having a difficult time falling asleep, Russell the Sheep tries just about everything to cure his case of insomnia, in an adorable board book with a snoring surprise inside, based on the bestselling Russell the Sheep. 75,000 first printing.

FEBRUARY

In February, one of our most recent members, @BurnAfterRunning has expressed an interest in running discussion of The Very Embarrassing Book of Dad Jokes: Because Your Dad Thinks He's Hilarious

Why did the banana go to the doctors?Because he wasn't peeling very well!Proving the age-old maxim that ‘it’s in the way that you tell them’, Dads – for the best part of forever – have always been renowned for being truly god-awful joke tellers. Whether it’s telling them at the wrong moment, misremembering the punchline or it just simply being one of those jokes that were terrible to begin with, Dads are an embarrassment to the whole family when it comes to trying to tell jokes.The VERY Embarrassing Book of Dad Jokes is full to the brim with jokes that only your dear old Dad would dare say – jokes that will make you groan, sigh … and then probably make you groan again. Dads take great pleasure in these kinds of jokes and some of them are so rubbish they actually blossom into proper rib-ticklers – but don’t tell your dad that, it’ll only encourage him!

2021 SPEED READ

And, if monthly readings aren't enough - or indeed, if they are too much! - we've started discussing a new Speed Read for 2021. Slow Read's allow us to tackle longer works, but much more quickly so they don't feel so intense. Get in on this quickly, or you might miss it!

Here's to a great 10th year, everyone!

Welcome to another (long overdue) edition of the TTRPBC Newsletter! I don't actually have a lot of news to share in this edition, but since we recently welcomed a few new members, I thought it would be nice to give them a proper welcome and let people know what's going on here.

So, first off, let me welcome @Alex , @BurnAfterRunning , @Morthrai , and @Doccowie - most of whom will be familiar to those who attend the Mitchester Arms on Fridays ( @NeilNjae , @Apocryphal , and publican @dr_mitch ).

The TTRPBC is both book club and a forum; our goal is to explore works of fiction together as gamers and discuss those books for their literary qualities, their plot, world-building, and character inspiration, and of course their gaming potential.

As a book club, we explore books in two ways:
1. MONTHLY READS
We nominate a 'Monthly Pick' each month to read together as a club and we discuss that book at the end of the month. At the moment, these monthly picks are picked by club members in rotation - the September pick was selected by @NeilNjae , with subsequent books to be picked in this order:
October: @clash_bowley
November: @dr_mitch
December: @RichardAbbott
January: @WildCard (which will be the beginning of our 10th year!)

After this, we begin the rotation again, or maybe mix it up. If you, as new members, are finding the club to your liking and want to take part in leading a book discussion, we'd be more than happy to fit you in. Participation is casual, meaning that members are not required to read each book to be in the club or to participate in the discussions. If you like the club, you'll find a way to participate on your own terms.

Monthly pics as generally not more than 400 pages (some have been longer), and are SF, fantasy, pulp, or historical fiction. We've also done the occasional graphic novel, adventurous travelogue, and interactive fiction. To get a sense of what we've read in the past, look through the index of discussion topics for the last 20 books https://ttrpbc.com/categories/official-selections or at this list of older books from our https://ttrpbc.com/discussion/12/the-first-seven-years#latest

We're about to start a discussion of our 91st book - Tehanu, by Ursula K. Leguin, the fourth book in her Earthsea series. We explored the first three Earthsea books in previous months, and by the same author we also did Always Coming Home (earlier this year) and The Dispossessed (a few years ago).

Our September pick will be Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente, an SF comedy along the lines of Douglas Adams about a music competition - in Spaaaace!, hosted by @NeilNjae . Read this book by the end of the month if you'd like to join in on the discussion.

Our October book, an SF classic of political intrigue and, well, languages I guess - by Jack Vance: The Languages of Pao, hosted by @clash_bowley

2. SLOW READS
Slow reads are a special category that we've done for the last three years in addition to the monthly picks. With a 'slow read' we generally pick a longer work and read it slowly - about 20 pages a week - with a new discussion topic each week. We've done three of these so far - The Lord of the Rings was our first, back in 2018. This was hosted over at G+ when the club was located there and was an immense success. As with our other G+ content, it would have been lost but for the efforts of @Michael_S_Miller who put in the work to put the discussions into book form so we could all have a copy.

Our second 'Slow Read' was of the Book of the New Sun quadrology by Gene Wolfe in 2019, another very successful read (though unlike Tolkien, not all members were able to get into the vibe to the same degree.

In 2020, we attempted triple-Hugo-award-winning The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K.Jemisin, an effort that was not as successful, with the majority of respondents not really enjoying it. We cut the discussion short after book 2, though a few of us have gone on to read the third book in the series, which we'll give a short discussion to in its own thread.

The Slow Read categories can be found here: https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/slow-reads

The nice thing about the slow read is the pacing - if, as a busy blogger, writer, or gamer, managing a book a month is a challenge, then the slow read allows you to participate in a discussion at a slower pace, spread out over a longer period of time. We've yet to discuss a slow read for 2021, but are open to suggestions. In the past we've considered Dune, Gormenghast, Moby Dick, and Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, though we haven't so far done any of those.

3. FORUM
The TTRPBC is also a forum and a great place to discuss books of all kinds with other gamers. We have a general forum for the discussion of books (including book awards, film adaptations, sharing articles about books or listing books) https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/general-book-babble and another for gaming https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/game-discussion

If you like to post book or game review, we have categories for those, too:
https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/book-reviews
https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/game-reviews

And lastly, we have categories for club talk:
https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/nominations-and-suggestions is for discussions surrounding what we'll read next as a club, and for announcing the monthly pics.
https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/help-and-how-to is the place for technical help or discussing the running and organization of the club, and
https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/offtopic is the catchall place for anything else you'd like to bring up.

So, that's who we are and what we do in a nutshell. Please feel free to introduce yourselves if you haven't already, or take the opportunity to ask any questions you might have.

Welcome to the long overdue Book Club Newsletter, issue No.6! Here's what's going on in the club, and below you'll find some opportunities to influence club direction.

MONTHLY PICKS

As February of 2020 comes to a close, we're getting ready to discuss our latest monthly book, The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks, hosted by @dr_mitch in the upcoming days. I've created a discussion category for the book which can be found here, for those of you who like to get notifications:
https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/86-(february-2020)-the-player-of-games-by-iain-m-banks

From the back cover:

The Culture - a humanoid/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players. One of the best is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, Player of Games, master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel & incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game, a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game and with it the challenge of his life, and very possibly his death.

Wikipedia page for the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games

March will see us reading the urban fantasy police novel, Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch, the first in a rather popular series of books that goes by the same name. This one's a nomination of @RichardAbbott , who will host the discussion at the end of March. Here's a link to that discussion category: https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/87-(march-2020)-rivers-of-london-by-ben-aaronovitch

Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_of_London_(novel)

THE SLOW READ

Our ongoing 'slow read' of N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy (winner of 3 successive Hugo awards!) continues each week. We're now about mid-way through the first book in the series and I think it has many of us scratching our heads for various reasons - which is probably a good thing!

If you've read the series at any time in the past, feel free to jump into the discussion with your 2-cents.

FUTURE MONTHLY SELECTIONS

With @RichardAbbott 's pick in March, we'll be at the end of current rotation of nominees, which means it's time to discuss how we'd like to move forward with our monthly picks. Before we do that, though, I'd like to extend an invitation to @WildCard to pick an April book for us and lead its discussion, he we would like to.

Once the first rotation is complete, we can either repeat the rotation as is (which begins with @BarnerCobblewood ), or we can rearrange the order by rolling dice as we've done in the past. This is also the time to ask if there's anyone who's currently in the rotation who wants out, or if there's anyone who isn't in the rotation, but would like to be ( @rossum or @Ray_Otus , for example?) The current rotation looks like this:
1. @BarnerCobblewood
2. @Apocryphal
3. @Michael_S_Miller
4. @NeilNjae
5. @clash_bowley
6. @dr_mitch
7. @RichardAbbott
8. (if willing) @WildCard

Of course, we can always adjust midstream or fit in a one-off host as we see fit. The rotation is really really just a tool to relieve me of the pressure from me if finding a host for each month's book, and it give everyone a fair shake a picking one and leading discussion.

DISCUSSION

This came up elsewhere, but rather than discuss it there, I thought we could append it to the newsletter.

How literary would you like your monthly picks to be?

For my part, I quite like a literary novel. By literary, I mean that I like it to be well-written, using creative language, and to offer something more than just a story. This might mean well realized characters or setting, but what I'm really getting at here are strong themes, and themes that might not be always obvious to the reader. A literary book, in my opinion, can be appreciated on several levels - not just for what it appears to be on the surface.

In the past, however, we've had several members express a dislike for this kind of book in the club. The reasons vary - some just find this kind of thing to be pretentious, others spent their educational career reading such books and now long for simplicity. These are all fair viewpoints as far as I'm concerned, and our club picks should try to appeal to the tastes of most members.

But really, what are the tastes of most members? Here's your chance to have a say to try to influence what other club members pick for their selection. Do we want literary books in the mix? Or should we stick with books that focus more on adventure, characters, settings, and story-telling. This is, afterall, a club about the way books inspire us to game.

Thanks,
Chris

I'm starting a newsletter as a place to post club news and book announcements in one place to make it easier to follow and keep up with the latest. Here we can announce upcoming books, let people know when a monthly discussion starts, and generally post notices about other threads (like calls for book nominations) in which club members might like to participate. Note that this thread will be closed for comment, though, in order to keep the news feed clean. The items posted here should instead link to other threads that are open to discussion.

And now to catch us up on the current club goings on.

TTRPBC NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 1
April 2019, Toronto, ON

• Discussion of the March Monthly Book - Mission of Gravity - is now underway and seeking participants.
• Our April book as been announced as Hiero's Journey by Stirling Lanier, a discussion to be led by @RichardAbbott . I've created a category for this book. Richard, would you mind posting an introduction/announcement?
• We haven't settled on a book for May, yet, but here's a link to the discussion of what to read in 2019. Please share your opinions: Book Club Discussion - Looking ahead to 2019
• The weekly discussions of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is ongoing, with new posts each Wednesday.

We had been running 3.0.2. Please let me know (or @rossum ) if you notice any strange behavior.

We had been running 2.6.4. Please let me know (or @rossum ) if you notice any strange behavior.

Here's a quick cheat sheet, plus a nice little interactive tutorial.

https://commonmark.org/help/

You can also use some basic HTML, but I'm unsure of what's actually support and what's automagically stripped out.

I am testing a rating plugin to allow people to upvote/downvote comments. Please, for now, test only in this thread.

(Note that you won't see it on mobile.)