At least, that’s the message I got from one of my co-workers. I don’t know if that says more about me or my co-worker. Anyway, here’s a link to more info.
Author: Michael Janairo
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What was your favorite book of 2006?
Saratoga Springs author M.E. Kemp weighs in with her favorite:
THE RIVALRY: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and the Golden Age of Basketball by John Taylor
You don’t have to be a sports nut to enjoy reading THE RIVALRY because it’s not about basketball, it’s about the men who play it. Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell were Titans in a personal clash that raised the level of play to Heroic. Chamberlain was the first ego-driven Superstar — fast cars, faster women, a gigantic appetite for the good things and the talent to command them. The only one who could control him on the court was Celtics’ Bill Russell, a proud, complicated and intelligent man with a family life and a cause.
Russell fought racism all his life. Chamberlain had fun playing off-season with the Harlem Globetrotters. Russell would never demean himself playing for a bunch of clowns. Mercurial Walt would up and quite when he felt like it. Russell never quit; he was driven to win, and always as a team. Wilt was a showboat most of his career.
Russell had the one thing Chamberlain really envied — a coach who would fight for his players. Any book with Red Auerbach in it has to be a fun read. The legendary Celtics coach had a mouth worth two points to the team with his browbeating of officials.
The book starts off with his finagling to acquire Russell in the first place — a deal about the Ice Capades for Russell as a draft pick. This is a fun read except for the ending, when one of the Titan’s dies. The reaction from the other is surprisingly touching. Read it and weep.
M. E. Kemp is the author of DEATH OF A DUTCH UNCLE (coming March ’07) and MURDER, MATHER AND MAYHEM.
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It doesn’t pay to charge…
In the world of literature, writers shouldn’t have to pay editors or agents to read their work, and that seems to be behind the failure of the $100,000 Sobol award, as reported by the AP:
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Join the conspiracy
Are you a book worm? A word-aholic? A devourer of novels? A poetry peruser? Are you big on biographies? Knowledgable about nonfiction? Passionate about prosody? Or even an academician on a mission? In short, are you a reader?
If so, then you’ve found the right place: The Times Union Books Blog: A conspiracy of smart people.
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Why I quit reading “Against the Day”
By now all the initial hoopla surrounding Thomas Pynchon’s “Against the Day” has died down, with the reviews coming in mostly mixed. So I feel I can finally confess that even though I was among those to receive an advanced readers copy, complete with my name and the name of the Times Union imprinted in thick magic marker, I gave up around Page 199.Giving up is not something that gives me pride, but when I realized that I didn’t know who I was reading about or, really, what was going on, and was searching my house for a really big piece of paper to map out the family trees of the book’s characters, I realized that the book had escaped me.
I’ve enjoyed reading Pynchon before, including Gravity’s Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49 and, especially, Mason and Dixon, but I don’t consider myself a huge fan of his work. I even gave up on Vineland.
Basically, the book wasn’t leading me anywhere — just showing me some rather clever and mildly humorous scenes, and connecting them with long expositions that spanned who knows how much time (I’m sure someone out there is busily trying to figure that out).
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Albany Project reading “Three Men in a Room”
An outfit calling itself The Albany Project, which seeks to return New York State Government to its rightful owners – the people, is starting an online book club, with its first book being Three Men in a Room: The Inside Story of Power and Betrayal in an American Statehouse by Seymour P. Lachman (w/ Robert Polner).
Go here for more info: http://www.thealbanyproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=104
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A new release from Christopher Ringwald
Former Times Union reporter, author and visiting scholar at The Sage Colleges Christopher Ringwald has a new book, “A Day Apart: How Jews, Christians, and Muslims Find Faith, Freedom, and Joy on the Sabbath,” which is now available from Oxford University Press.The book received a STARRED review in the January issue of Booklist, which called it “a valuable contribution to interfaith studies.”
In conjunction with the book, Ringwald also will be holding various public events:
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That’s interesting
The tireless book reviewer and editor Bob Hoover at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tries to make the word “interesting” interesting again with this short list of books:
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Where’s ’shaggy dog’ come from?
The Guardian in London says the Oxford English Dictionary is looking for help. They’ve got about 40 words they don’t know the origin to, and are opening it up to the public. The article, of course, is written in England for Brits, but that doesn’t mean Americans can’t get involved. Click here for more info about the OED word hunt.
Here’s what the guardian says:
