Besides the lines mentioned in previous answers, I'd like to mention E. Gufeld's recommendation: 2.f4. Gufeld devotes 11 pages out of 160 to this line in his book "An Opening Repertoire for the Attacking Player". Even though this line is well presented in the book, I was not convinced. Besides a couple lost games with this line, the following statistics convinced me not to pursue it: in 42% of 2.f4 games White ends up losing whilst only 33% of 2.c3 games are lost by White.

So, I wouldn't encourage you to pursue it.

Any diverging views out there ?

Cheers !

I think that maybe the "taming the sicilian" idea would fit you best. The g3 lines are usually not the strongest in the open sicilian, but they are certainly not a lame try and you can play them against virtually anything black can come up with.  The Bb5 lines and the c3 lines are all decent as well, but I think your aim of improving is better served with playing the open sicilian. The c3-sicilian will usually land you in the same sorts of positions, where it is often hard to come up with active ideas. The Bb5 line is supposedly best of the antis, but I just dont like the positions. 
So I'd just go for the open with g3 (or Be2 but I dont know of any repertoire book with that unfortunately) and keep playing the closed on occasion just for variety. One last comment about the open in general. It is often advertised that you would need loads of theory to play it, but I think it is usually quite easy to play and black players up to 2000 are usually not that booked up in their lines anyways (courtesy of meeting all the anti's ) and certainly not in the g3-lines (eg I only browsed through some of the lines in the Taimanov, while I really studied the rest).

Hello,

So far i am happily playing the repertoire from Attacking with 1.e4 by John Emms. I am trying to improve my repertoire and explore some other sicilian lines (to find out whether i like positionel or tactical play). I have the following ideas but i cant choose as to what would be good for an improving club player (rated around 1700).

At the moment i play the closed sicilian and i could read more about that or:

- Learn the Bb5 sicilian and against 2....e6 the KIA (on which i have a book and already employ against the french).

- Learn the c3 sicilian, although these positions seem to be with less "active" play for white and quite difficult to understand.

-Go for an open sicilian repertoire wit g3 (like Taming the sicilian).

Any other suggestions or recommendations between these?

Thx for replying