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We live in a colorful world. If viewed from the outside, the Earth is a breathtaking blue. In Jasper Fforde’s world that he creates for his new novel, “Shades of Grey,” color, and your perception of it, dictates your social status. A Colortocracy, it’s called. The higher the color spectrum you can see, the more advanced your status becomes. Our narrator, Eddie Russett, is a Red who’s content with the social hierarchy and its limitations, until he meets Jane, a stunning Grey, and he begins to question the nature of things. Fforde peppers his breezy tale with fine-tuned humorous observation and charming wit—he begins each chapter with one of the world’s “laws,” such as “All children are to attend school until the age of sixteen or until they have learned everything, whichever be the sooner.” Fforde’s quirky work could easily fly by in a weekend. It’s reported to be the first book of a planned trilogy. With a world like Chromatacia, as it’s blessed, Fforde could easily keep going and going. (Tom Lynch)

Jasper Fforde discusses “Shades of Grey” January 7 at Barnes & Noble, 55 Old Orchard Center, Skokie, (847)676-2230, at 7:30pm. Free.

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Sometime, this year I think, email started to overwhelm me. While I’ve long been a heavy user of the tool, especially as a receiver—most PR firms pitch stories to me  this way—it was something I managed. Until I recently realized that it was managing me. I could no longer keep up, unless I tended to email at the expense of all other projects, and those other projects seemed to move forward slower and slower. Even worse, it felt like a treadmill: I just read and answered email over and over, while the months and years ticked by. This was not the life I wanted.

Turns out I’m not alone. John Freeman, the Newcity book critic and now editor of Granta, has managed to ignore his @ sign long enough to turn out a fine consideration of “The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox.” It’s an economical book—who has time to read more than 220 pages with all that damn email to tend to, anyway?—that manages to cover the history of human messaging, from mail’s earliest miraculous character and the progressive impact on humanity it’s wrought, leading up to our current information overload, where, as Freeman writes, “The technology that was supposed to set us free to work from anywhere, to check in and clock out on our own time, has now become the longest employee leash ever invented because we can’t seem to log off.” Freeman’s coverage of the evolving character of society this technology is bringing is an important conversation that he manages to make entertaining as well. May even justify shutting off the Blackberry to hear what he has to say. (Brian Hieggelke)

John Freeman discusses “The Tyranny of E-Mail” November 4 at Barnes & Noble, 1441 West Webster, (773)871-3610, at 7:30pm. Free.

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In April of 1989, a 28-year-old Wall Street investment banker went for a run in Central Park and was savagely beaten and raped, only to be found hours later unconscious with seventy-five-percent blood loss, severe hypothermia and a skull fracture so gruesome an eye was completely removed from its socket. The doctors didn’t expect her to survive, but she did. When she awoke she had no memory of the event. The media withheld the victim’s name and she quickly became known as the Central Park Jogger; the story swept the nation as a group of youths were tried and convicted of the crime. Years later, a new confession came forth that was corroborated with DNA evidence, and the teenagers originally convicted of the crime had their names cleared. The jogger identified herself as Trisha Meili and wrote a memoir about the events, the bestseller “I Am the Central Park Jogger,” and has since traveled discussing her book with inspirational speaking about recovery, hope and her survival. Haunting material, but Meili finds a way to include wit and energy and focuses her work on the possibility, and necessity, of healing. (Tom Lynch)

September 14 at Barnes & Noble, 1 E. Jackson, (312)362-8792, 5pm.

By Amy Brachmann

Glenn Taylor is not letting anything go to his head. In the year since the publication of his first novel, “The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart,” he’s had a good bit of success, including awards and new publishing contracts, but still, the suburban writer works to maintain a balance between his work as a novelist, teaching English and fiction writing at Harper College and his wife and sons, ages 6 and 3.

The author, who earned an MFA from Southwest Texas State University, had always seen himself as a short-story writer and had never tried anything resembling a novel before beginning “Trenchmouth.” Read the rest of this entry »

Is it wrong to feel optimistic? You couldn’t be blamed if you didn’t. Yet while the country’s economy crumbles around us and less and less funds are available for the producers of the printed word, those in the literary world are finding new and inventive ways to stay afloat. We will not go down without a fight, and progress, of course, is key. So is awareness—in order to get the word out more efficiently (and, likely, to untether itself from the uncertain future of the paper form), Printers Row Book Fair changed its name from “Book Fair” to “Lit Fest” to have a title that better fully represents the weekend’s events, in time for its twenty-fifth anniversary edition. As is our custom, we time our annual Lit 50 list to the weekend’s events; this year’s list of local behind-the-scenes literati—no straight-up authors or poets this time—covers a large spectrum of Chicago’s world of words. As with past years we sought out those behind the smaller presses as well as the monumental figures. Some new names have emerged and many staples appear again, but all tirelessly labor to bring this ancient art to the community at large. Read the rest of this entry »