I only just read Startship Troopers a while ago and loved it. However, I almost wouldn't call it military sci-fi. There was very little action (or at least significantly less than in the movie).

It was almost like an exploration of military psychology with a dose of conservative political views. I ended up buying the paperback for my Dad for Christmas as I thought he'd probably like it.

Merry Christmas! :xmas:

I just finished The Iron King and in my opinion it has good material for an interesting discussion. I listened to it and Peter Joyce is a good narrator that really fits the story well, if anyone else is interested in the audiobook. Next up on the listening front for me is Sissy Spacek reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Never read it before so I'm excited to finally get this one crossed off.

It's serendipity for me if either win. I had already planned to listen to them, the reason being that I'm trying to finish a few subgoals for my reading challenge before the end of the year and one of them is to read club nominees from July-December that didn't win. I needed two more but I have other books taking up my actual reading so I decided to use audiobooks for this which limited my options. Because of that I had to set aside a few others I was considering that didn't have audiobooks but luckily I was interested in these two and they worked perfectly, and to find both are nominees for second chance month is an added bonus!

I'm also interested in The Time Machine and haven't ever read it either, so I'm good with any of those three winning. Starship Troopers on the other hand... :D

So is The Iron King historical fiction. That is taking real people and events and weaving a fictional story out of that material?

January 2015 VOTE
 

A FOUR WAY TIE!!!!! I'm away from my computer at the moment, and setting up a poll on an iPad isn't the easiest task in the world, so it will be a while before I post the runoff vote, but barring unforeseen circumstances, it will be posted before midnight tonight, EST. ;) :)

I'm Baaaaack. And the 3-day run-off poll is here. :)

Yes, it's historical fiction. It's set in the early 1300's under the reign of Philip IV, also known as Philip the Fair or the Iron King, who was very handsome but also very cold and hard. He was ambitious and had been successful in centralising his power over many feudal regions, though he was susceptible to large debts that he dealt with in...creative ways. His daughter Isabella was married to the king of England and was therefore queen of England even though her husband may have been more interested in men. His three sons were all married but there was worry about a lack of male heirs and questions about the parentage of female heirs.

There was a lot of interesting stuff going on at the time, including the French Inquisition, a papacy based in France whom Philip had influence over, the persecution of the Knights Templar and scandalous accusations within the royal family. The novel follows a cast of characters from different social strata though they're all in some way related to the central royal plot.