Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • Book review: The Fear Index by Robert Harris

    The Fear Index
    The Fear Index by Robert Harris
    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    A fun, though at times, implausible read about how a computer genius works for a hedge fund and creates a powerful algorithm that learns not only how to work the stock market, but how to leverage information it can glean from all sorts of digital sources, such as the news.

    I felt like I learned a lot about algorithmic trading, in which computers buy and sell stocks in milliseconds.

    The main character, though, was hard to like. He was a cranky genius, more concerned about his artificial intelligence than anything else. So when it seems like his identity is stolen and things happen to him that he seems to be the cause of (through orders made from his email and payments made from his accounts), and it is clear that his clever AI is behind it though no one believes him, it seems Harris is trying to make him sympathetic. But his cranky reactions (and over actions) and inability to communicate make him annoying.

    Luckily, the super clever AI is still there, churning away dastardly plot points to keep the novel moving. It’s pure escapist fun, and enough of a framework with which to explore all the good research that went into making the speculative fiction seem somewhat plausible.

    View all my reviews

  • Book review: ‘1Q84’ by Haruki Murakami

    1Q84
    1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    The Little People are Watching You

    “If something really existed, you had to accept it as a reality, whether or not it made sense or was logical. That was his basic way of thinking. Principles and logic didn’t give birth to reality. Reality came first, and the principles and logic followed.”

    Murakami’s imaginative worlds — with preternaturally gifted girls, bewildered young men, misshapen men, magical creatures, violence, and passageways between various forms of reality — all set in a recognizable every-day mundaneness of contemporary Japan are the main element that attracts me to his work.

    “1Q84” doesn’t disappoint. And the quote above does a great job of summing up the novelist’s approach to this novel and to writing in general — you have to go with wherever “reality” takes you. In “1Q84” that reality is a strange Japan in 1984, in which some characters can see two moons, and in which strange beings, called Little People, have such extraordinary powers that they help to power a religious cult, which rests at the heart of this really long novel.
    (more…)

  • My top cultural experiences of 2014

    In my former career as an arts editor at a daily newspaper, the year-end best-of lists were a standard. And now that I’ve change jobs this year, and I’m reading so many other journalists’ best-of lists, I am impressed by how many cultural things they (and my past me) have been able to experience in a year. Now I also know how people who aren’t paid to experience so many things can find such lists to be impossible recommendations, a bunch of things that most people will never have the time to get around to. Though arts journalists try to present as complete as possible summaries, I think readers of such lists may only be looking for one thing that might inspire them to go out and experience that cultural thing for themselves.

    So here’s a lean look back at 2014.
    (more…)

  • My 2014, by the numbers

    Some random metrics about my life in 2014.

    Blogging
    Number of blog posts on michaeljanairo.com: 73
    Most read blog post: Readercon wrap-up: ‘You don’t look Filipino’

    Work
    Number of jobs left: 1
    Number of new jobs started: 1

    Writing career
    Number of short stories published: 3
    Number of writing conferences attended: 1 (Readercon)

    Music
    Top Spotify artist: Bruce Springsteen

    Travel
    Number of countries outside the US visited: 1 (Guatemala)
    Number of cities outside the US visited: 7 (Monterrico, Antigua Guatemala, Panajachel, Santa Catarina, San Antonio, Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala)
    Number of US cities visited outside the Capital Region: 14 (NYC, Pittsburgh, Providence, New Haven, Boston, Cambridge, Williamstown, North Adams, Freeport, Prospect Harbor, Lincoln, Omaha)

    Social media
    Number of tweets: 512
    Most impressions on one tweet: 40,461
    The tweet: https://twitter.com/mjanairo/status/420222698036289536

    Most looped Vine: Dance @yaleartgallery

    Number of new FB friends: 89
    Number of lost FB “friends”: About 200
    FB year in review: Here

    Most liked Instagram post: Found at work today.
    Instagram year in review: Here

  • #tbt Review: Zadie Smith’s debut novel White Teeth

    White Teeth White Teeth by Zadie Smith
    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Originally written and published in the Times Union in August 2001.
    “Clean white teeth are not always wise,” says an elderly British veteran in Zadie Smith’s stunning debut novel, “White Teeth,” setting up one of the major ideas of her book, which has been recently released in paperback (Vintage; 464 pages; $14). “When I was in the Congo, the only way I could identify the nigger was by the whiteness of his teeth … See a flash of white and bang!”

    This brief passage contains everything Smith is writing against: stereotypical depictions of people with dark skins, most often natives of lands colonized by whites who are reduced to nothing more than targets of violence.

    What makes this novel great, though, is that Smith uses a sharp wit, sensitive insights, humorous and sometimes uncomfortable situations and a rich cast of quirky, believable characters who struggle with their hopes and disappointments in North London. As opposed to the plot, which turns overly melodramatic at the end, Smith’s characters are where her true talents shine. (more…)

  • Slate Picks make a great pick

    Screen Shot 2014-12-17 at 7.36.37 PM
    Slate has a new feature called Slate Picks, and under the heading “Science Fiction That Can Change Our Future” they asked contributors what books they would recommend for the 2016 presidential candidates.

    The list of books includes such well-known and respected authors as Margaret Atwood, Kim Stanley Robinson, Cory Doctorow, Elizabeth Bear, and Samuel Delaney. The list also includes an anthology that has a story by yours truly in it, Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History.

    So if you’re looking for a gift for the presidential candidate in your life, check out Slate Picks.

  • Saying good-bye to an old friend

    minutemaid

    I grew up with Minute Maid Frozen Lemon Juice. It always seemed a bottle was in the fridge, though I don’t ever remember using it when I would cook. Then, years later, I married a woman whose family consumed Minute Maid Frozen Lemon Juice as if it were a staple, much in the same way that I grew up in a household in which soy sauce seemed to work with just about everything (but especially rice).

    And even though we knew grocery stores in our area no longer carried it (in fact, the manager of one store said that the product is no longer being made), we still went ahead and just used it as usual.

    Now it is gone.

    Sure, there are other products out there. There are also fresh lemons. But for now let’s take a moment to say goodbye to a beloved consumer foodstuff.

    Good-bye.

  • #tbt review: Lisey’s Story by Stephen King

    This review originally appeared in the Times Union on March 1, 2007.

    liseysstory

    “Lisey’s Story” by Stephen King. Read by Mare Winningham. Unabridged, 19 hours, 16 CDs. Simon & Schuster. $49.95.

    In ancient Greek drama, deus ex machina was used when the plot got so out of control that only divine intervention could resolve it. “Lisey’s Story” is the opposite.

    Lisey is the widow of a famous author still dealing with grief two years after his death. Her loneliness is convincing, as is the magical place — Boo’ya Moon — where her husband found inspiration and confronted horrors.

    What bedevils the plot, though, is an insane stalker who terrorizes Lisey for her husband’s papers. This one-dimensional, inexplicable character clearly arrives for some anti-divine intervention to create chaos. King, however, eventually keeps the plot tidy and unsurprising.

    Winningham does a winning job of conveying Lisey’s melancholy as well as other characters’ madness.

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  • On Ursula Le Guin’s awesome speech

    You can read the full text here, and here are some of my favorite nuggets.

    Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.

    …

    Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

    The challenge for writers (and readers) and humans (and thinkers) is to confront the questions about what is real and do we live in ways that make us fully human (as opposed to subjects or objects)? How can we work toward alternatives?