Happy Birthday Blog

"Happy Birthday to Blog
Happy Birthday to Blog
Happy Birthday Waterstone's Liverpool One Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club Blog
Happy Birthday to Blog"

Exactly 1 year ago today I posted the first entry on this blog. Since then we've grown and grown, receiving a record 704 views last month from people other than me. As the map on the right shows, these views have come mainly from the UK but also from distant lands (the figures are based only on the stats recorded by the blog for the last three months, not the whole year).

Other birthday stats: The most visited post on the blog is "Sister Book Club Forming: Coffee and Comics" with 76 views, closely followed by the summary of our discussion of The City and The City by China Miéville. The Sister Book Club post probably did so well thanks to some Twitter publicity from Graphic Novel author (and author of 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool), John Reppion. The blog also benefited from a recent piece of good PR by Science Fiction critic and publisher Cheryl Morgan (no relation) who picked us out for praise on her site.

So here's to a successful first year and the hope of many more.

Upwards and Onwards!

- Glyn

Edit: Apparently the blog shares its birthday with Liverpool-born horror supremo Clive Barker himself. Let's hope he hasn't seen the score we gave to Hellbound Heart....

Apologies for absence - October 4th

I'm sorry but I won't be at Monday's 6pm meeting to discuss The Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin.

I've won last minute tickets to a big gig at the Hammersmith Apollo in London and the offer was too good to refuse. Sorry for letting you down but if someone takes some notes and most importantly records the score, I'll get it posted up on the blog ASAP.

Have a good meeting. See you next month, if not before, to discuss Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

All the best,

Glyn

Changing Permissions

After some feedback at the last session I've tweaked the permissions on the blog to allow anyone to post a comment, irrespective of whether you have a Blogger account or not. This means the blog is more exposed to spam but hopefully I can keep on top of it and clean up any mess before it becomes too intrusive.

Enjoy the freedom folks :-)

- Glyn

P.S. Discussion summary of Slaughterhouse 5 coming soon.

Suggestion Box

This post represents the suggestion box for books for the group to discuss in the future. There will be a permanent link to it in the right column so that long after it sinks into the depths of the blog you can find it and add your suggestions in the comments section below.

If you're unfamiliar with the procedure, essentially we'll read anything from the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres (and there are arguments for Horror, and maybe even one day the odd Graphic Novel), the book has to be readable in a month which means that exceptionally long novels might be frowned upon, however if there is a reasonable consensus that a book would be good to read we could rig it so that long novels are preceded by shorter works.

All suggestions are taken on board and the final reading list is drawn by blind ballot in book club meetings.

So without further hesitation - let the recommendation begin!

Postponement of Snow Crash

Dear all,

Due to my absence from Liverpool for the first few days of this week I've postponed the upcoming session on Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash until the following Monday (11th January - 6pm). Sorry for the inconvenience.

Also, due to simply being amazing hectic the notes from our discussion last month have not gone online yet. They will be posted as soon as I can get back to Liverpool, apologies for the delay.

Hope you had good Christmases and New Years,

All the best,

Glyn

Here we go!

Welcome to the first post on the brand new blog for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club held at Waterstone's Liverpool One.

I'm Glyn, Blogger-in-chief, and also the Bookseller in charge of the Science Fiction/ Fantasy/ Horror/ Graphic Novels/ Manga section of the store (so if you have any suggestions for books you'd like to see on our shelves just let me know and I'll do what I can).

A brief description of what this blog is and what it plans to do:-

• It's a friendly place where we can go to carry on the discussions of the Book Club itself.
• It's the first stop to get information on the club, if you miss a session and need to know what to read next, or you didn't write down that other book I recommended, it should all be on here.

• It's the place to share other knowledge, reviews of books, and opinions which may otherwise not get shared in the brief time we have together once a month.

Hopefully, it goes without saying that this blog aims to create an atmosphere conducive to the friendly discussion of books and science fiction/fantasy-related topics and behaviour detrimental to this cause will not be tolerated.

Finally, whilst I am a Waterstone's employee and this blog is being run by me on the group's behalf, the views expressed by both myself and the blog are not representative of Waterstone's as a company, nor do they represent the opinions of Waterstone's or the HMV group of which the company is a part.

Right.

That's all the formal introductory matter out of the way, on with the discussion!

P.S. - If anyone wants to post an article of their own (rather than simply comment on one) then please feel free to e-mail it to send it to me and I'll post it up on your behalf ASAP. This is probably the best way to share your reviews if you want to put any online.