All the votes are in, and GWCer’s voted in a landslide to read Robert A. Heinlein’s Hugo-winning novel, Starship Troopers — a selection sure to spark lots of discussion.

Why? Heinlein is famous — or maybe infamous – for his unique combination of extreme socal and political views. Wikipedia describes ‘Troopers as a novel in which Heinlein “examines moral and philosophical aspects of sufferage, civic virtue, the necessities of war and capital punishment, and the nature of juvenile delinquency,” and in my personal reading experience, I’d say this is an accurate description. As you can imagine, the results of this examination prove somewhat incidiary.

More succinctly, it’ll probably piss a lot of people off.

One thing’s certain, though: it’s a short read with a long discussion tail. Perfect for the GWC Book Club. (And no, watching the movie doesn’t give you a feel for the book.)

Starship Troopers [Wikipedia]
Via Amazon [What's this?]
Join The Discussion [GWC Forum]

The suggestions are in and this morning we posted the December GWC Book Club selection poll. If you get a chance, swing by the GWC Forum and vote for the books you’d like to group read next month. Voting will remain open through November 30th, and we’ll announce the December selection on December 1st.

Note: Though we only select the top-voted book each month, the book club poll allows you to vote for multiple books. Be sure to vote for all the books you’d like to read!

December Book Selection Poll [GWC Forum]

Don’t forget: we start voting on the December GWC Book Club selection on the 15th, so you’ve got just a few days left to add your recommendation to the list.

It’s easy. Just visit the Book Selection thread in the GWC Forum and add a post with the name and author of your suggested book as the title. Inside the post, tell everyone a little bit about the book and why you think everyone will enjoy it.

And if you haven’t checked out October’s Dune or this month’s Ender’s Game, don’t feel like you missed out. The discussion forums for these books remain open, and we’re still talking about them.

(Thanks, zimpenfish, for the great CC-licensed photo.)

The votes are in, and this month’s community-selected book of the month is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. If you haven’t yet read this much-borrowed-from classic, this is a great opportunity to delve into it with lots of company as the GWC community reads it together.

And if there’s a book you’d enjoy reading with the community, you can post your recommendation in the GWC Forum’s Book Club section. We gather up all the selections and start voting on the 15th of each month.

Group Read: Ender’s Game [GWC Forum]
Ender’s Game Via Amazon [What's this?]

If you love reading sci-fi as much as watching it, there’s nothing more fun than meeting someone who introduces you to a new story — or better yet, an author who’s written many, many stories that you can read over the next months (or years) of your life. Well, now you can meet dozens of people like that — your friends in the GWC community.

This week we added a special new area to the GWC Forum where we can all participate in selecting a new book for each month of the year. In a separate forum in the new ‘club space you can discuss the current (or a past) book with everyone else who’s reading it. We’ll post the books here, too, so you can participate even if you’re not a forum denizen.

We’re looking forward to seeing your suggestions — and I certainly plan on reading more than just the ones that become “book of the month.”

For details, check out the Book Selection and Group Read Discussion areas over on the forum.