Mar
05
Posted by : | On : March 5, 2002
We’d originally planned to discuss a book on this date, but Willie Siros got a bunch of free passes to a movie preview and convinced us to postpone the meeting. A large group of Reading Group members and their significant others (at least 20 people total) went to the Metropolitan to see this adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel.
We thought this was a well-crafted action movie full of impressive computer-generated images of time passing quickly. We liked the performances of Guy
Feb
19
Posted by : | On : February 19, 2002
This book continued our month of discussing literary works. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay recently won the Pulitzer prize. The story is about two young men (Sam and Joe) who are pioneers in the comic book industry during World War II. The writer (Sam) is a native New Yorker, and the artist (Joe) is a recent immigrant from Eastern Europe.
Since A. T. had to miss this meeting due to illness, Lori ran the meeting. Seven persons attended, of whom 5 had read at least some portion of the book. One person e-mailed comments. The opinions ranged from O.K. to Great, although the book had almost no fantastic elements and was merely associated with our field
Feb
05
Posted by : | On : February 5, 2002
Nine people attended this discussion. Blindness is a novel about a plague that causes people to go blind. Doctors can’t determine the physical cause of the blindness or determine how it spreads. The newly blind people are quarantined to try to prevent spread of the disease. Unusually, none of the characters have names or physical descriptions. They’re just referenced by their profession or role in the story (the Doctor, the Girl with Glasses, etc.) Everyone at the meeting had read most or all of the book. None had read anything else by Saramago.
It must be mentioned that our reading of this book was largely due to a review of it by Robert Silverberg in Asimov’s. Silverberg wrote passionately about this book being a great SF novel, and he mentioned that the author had won the Nobel
Jan
22
Posted by : | On : January 22, 2002
Fourteen people attended this meeting, include one first time participant. The subject of this meeting was the first book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The meeting was scheduled a month after the movie opened, so that everyone who wanted to see the movie first could do so. Everyone had finished the book.
The group quickly divided into two camps. About half of us had originally read this book as children and reread it regularly since. The story was so deeply ingrained in these people that they could not speak objectively about it. One person felt
Jan
08
Posted by : | On : January 8, 2002
Eleven people attended this meeting, and one submitted comments by email. Mendoza in Hollywood is the third novel in Baker’s continuing series about the Company. In this book, the immortal botanist Mendoza is sent to collect rare plants in Southern California in the 1800s. In the course of her assignment she absorbs local color, learns about the great movies that will be made soon in this location, gets involved in local politics, and learns unexpected new things about time travel. Everyone at the meeting had read the book and both its predecessors.
This meeting was unusual because our group had discussed all of Baker’s previous books and many of us had read her stories in Asimov’s. We came into the discussion already knowing that the author knows how to write, how to pace, and knows how to do research. Thus many of our comments were at a higher
