Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • Audio Books: ‘Imperium’

     “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome,” by Robert Harris. Read by Simon Jones. Unabridged, 13.5 hours. Simon & Schuster Audio. $49.95.
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  • ‘On Truth’

    ‘On Truth’ is a treatise of distinction
    Author says lies toy with grasp of reality

    By MICHAEL JANAIRO, Staff writer

    Harry G. Frankfurt has followed up his 2005 best-seller, “On Bull—-,” which was a philosophical inquiry into “hot air” statements that reflect an indifference to truth, with an equally thought-provoking (and equally slim) volume.

    “On Truth” (Knopf; 101 pages; $12.50) aims to explain what he neglected in his previous book: why truth is important.
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  • Celebrate Black History Month

    February is Black History Month, and the Times Union Books Blog will be celebrating by highlighting one book each day from the rich African-American literary tradition.

    From slave narratives to the latest best-seller from Eric Jerome Dickey, and with plenty of essays, poems and novels in between … from writers like Frederick Douglass, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison and many more … there’s much than just one book per day.

    This is where you can help. Which text from the African-American literary tradition do you think everybody should read?

    Send an e-mail with the name of the title, the author, the reasons why you think the text is a must read, and your name and a little bit about yourself to the Books Blog moderator, Michael Janairo, at mjanairo@timesunion.com.

    Or just respond to this post with the same information.

    Then check out the Books Blog at http://blogs.timesunion.com/books to see what other people are recommending.

    For ideas, you may want to check out

    This Library of Congress site. 

    This PBS site.

    This Gale-Thompson research site. 

    The African-American Literature Book Club

    The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project

  • Lessons in self-publishing

    At the Times Union, we get lots of calls, letters and books from self-published authors. Here are some links with interesting takes on the subject.

    Slate magazine recently wrote about Amazon.com’s practice of having self-published authors enter into a murky ethical realm of buying reviews.

    The Book Square blog follows up, and finds the service may no longer be available. That blog is here:
    http://www.booksquare.com/archives/2007/01/25/2268/

    The moral of the story is that self-published authors need to be savvy about what they are getting into.

  • The text-message novel

    In an update of the good old epistolary novel comes a text-message novel out of Finland. The USA Today reports:

    A novel in which the entire narrative consists of mobile phone text messages was published Wednesday in Finland, home of the world’s top handset maker Nokia Corp.

    The story is here. Now if a book based on a blog is a “blook”; what does that make a text-message novel? A “t-mook?”

  • Events on Thursday, Jan. 25

    From Christopher D. Ringwald’s A DAY APART press release:

    Ringwald is a journalist (and a former Times Union reporter) and educator based as a visiting scholar at The Sage Colleges in Albany, NY. A DAY APART has been hailed by Asma Gull Hassan as “a solemn, brilliant call to multi-faith commonalities and by Solomon Schimmel as “illuminating and inspiring.”

    (Oxford University Press, Jan. 2007; Aly Mostel, publicist, 212 726-6111)

    Lecture by author. Thursday, January 25, 2007. Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Ave., Albany, NY. Sponsored by Friends of the Albany Public Library. Contact John Sirin (518) 427-4344) or sirinj@uhls.lib.ny.us

  • Vanity Fair reviews O.J.’s unpublished book

    That’s right. They did it on “If I Did It.” You can read James Walcott’s review here. One of the best lines is a paranthetical:

    (who knew a book about a double homicide could be so flipping coy?)

  • News from the world of books

  • William Kennedy and the Oscars

    My colleague Mark McGuire recently caught up with William Kennedy and his process of preparing to vote for the Academy Awards.

    Click more for the full article.

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