Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

The North Austin Reading Group met on December 5^th at the North Village Branch of the Austin Public Library to discuss Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey.  Eight people attended; all had read Fforde before.  All started the book and 6 finished it.  The book was published by Viking Adult, December 2009.  It is available in hardback, paperback, audio book and on the Kindle.  One innovation, “The Shades of Grey Cheat Sheet,” can be found at http://www.jasperfforde.com/grey/images/cheat.pdf.  It’s a two-page list of some of the high points of a difficult-to-describe book.

This element—being hard to describe—made the book ideal for a discussion group.  The setting is of a dystopian post-apocalyptic society (the Something that Happened) with a pecking order determined by one’s sensitivity to and perception of color.  The “New Order” had undertaken “The Great Leap

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Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds

The North Reading Group met on October 9^th to discuss Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds.  The book was published in mid-2010 by Gollancz and Ace Books.  It is set in the future, in a world with a geography resembling Mars, and begins in a city/structure called Spearpoint.  “Zones” existing at different energy states are inhabited by humans, some modified to exist in specific zones.  The zones are at different technology levels, and transitioning between them requires drugs and may induce debilitating or even fatal biological problems.  The

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A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The North Reading Group met on June 21st to discuss A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Nine members attended and 8 had read it.  The story was serialized in All-Story magazine, starting in 1912, as “Under the Moons of Mars,” by “Norman Bean.”  The stories were collected and A Princess of Mars was published in 1917.  One member commented that she ”could see how it was pretty hot stuff in the old days,” and “Beats the hell out of Little Women and all that stuff!”  Another said that this was from the golden age of SF and he had “strong memories of reading the whole pile.”  He owned first editions.

Other comments were generally complimentary, qualified by the time since it was written- that the protagonist, John Carter, was a fun adventurer; Burroughs was a

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Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

The reading group met at the North Village Library on Steck on Monday, April 4, to discuss Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan. Fourteen people attended. Thirteen started the book, and nine finished reading it. Two people had read this author’s work before. Seven people intended to read the next book in the series. Many said that they would have enjoyed it in their adolescence also  (the targeted age group).

Everyone seemed to enjoy the book on some level. Many added the phrase

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Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

The North Reading Group met at the Milwood Library on January 18th to discuss Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. This is his most famous work and has been published in myriad editions since its first release in 1726.  Eleven members attended the meeting, and six editions of the book were represented.  All had started the book, and all but one had finished it. Only nine had read Swift before, but those who had read him had invariably read some version of Gulliver’s Travels.

Opinions varied wildly, with one reader calling it one of her favorite books

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The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford

This meeting at the Milwood Library drew seven attendees. Our topic was Jeffrey Ford’s The Shadow Year, a recent winner of the World Fantasy Award. This book follows a group of kids in 1960s Long Island growing up in a neighborhood where strange things are happening. Two of us had read Ford before. All of us started the book, and six finished it.

We liked the book’s strong narrative voice and evocative description of Long Island in the LBJ era. People in the group who remembered that time enjoyed Ford’s

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Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams

Twelve people attended this discussion at the North Village Library, and another submited comments by email. Our topic was Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams, one of our most frequently discussed authors. This story explores big ideas including immortality, the creation of pocket universes, and the search for the existence of higher intelligence. Nine of us had read Williams before. Nine of us started the book, and eight of us finished it.

The book is a series of episodes of the meanderings of a bored, rich, immortal guy. The book starts out with long passage that seems like something out of a

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The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran

Fourteen people met at the Milwood Library to discuss The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran. This novel is a futuristic adventure story with elements of cyberpunk. It was published in 1989 and has long been out of print, but we were able to read it because the author recently released a free electronic version of the book. Four of us had read Moran before. Eleven of us started the book, and nine of us finished it. Five of us read the original 1989 paperback version of the book, four read it eletronically, and two printed it out and read the hardcopy.

Many of us enjoyed the book as a fast-paced adventure story. Trent, the cocky

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The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Nine people attended this discussion at the North Village Library. Our topic was The Windup Girl, the first novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. This novel had recently won the Hugo and Nebula awards, and its author had just been announced as the Guest of Honor for ArmadilloCon in 2011. The book is a near-future story set in a world where fossil fuels are running out and calories are the new currency. Biotechnology has enabled the creation of entirely new species including artificial humanoids who are essentially slaves. Four of us had read the author’s short fiction before. All of us started The Windup Girl, and five finished it.

One reader felt that the author “knocked it out the the park” with this

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