Michael Janairo

Web Analytics

Author: Michael Janairo

  • On Truth — by Harry Frankfurt

    I recently finished reading Harry Frankfurt’s “On Truth” — a followup to a book with an opposite title that couldn’t be published in the newspaper (the euphemism I used then was “hot air.” But that review is available here.
    (more…)

  • Write back to Iran’s president

    UAlbany’s Edward Schwarzschild writes with his latest project:

    Here’s a quick note to say hello and happy new year and I hope your 2007 is off to a terrific start. Also, thought you might enjoy taking a look at a new project that just went up as the lead feature on a cool webzine today. The project involves getting a bunch of writers to reply to President Ahmadinejad’s open letter to the American People. You can see my brief introduction to the project plus, during the course of this week, the various letters written by all sorts of people at: www.jewcy.com
    Here’s an excerpt from his letter to Ahmadeinejad:
    I won’t discuss your hate-mongering campaign against the historical fact of the Holocaust. Instead, I’ll point out, as I’m sure you’re aware, that Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the Bush administration’s “war on terror” are the subject of intense national debate, a debate which led in our most recent election to the large-scale defeat of those who support President Bush’s agenda. Can you say the same about the level of debate within your own country?

  • Jennifer Armstrong in the news

    The Saratoga Springs children’s author was among a group of people (organized by Emma Dodge Hanson and including Jane Haugh) who traveled to Africa to give gifts to orphans, including books.

    Click more for the story from Times Union staff writer Leigh Hornbeck.

    (more…)

  • Test your Bible knowledge

    The Of Books and Bicycles blog has a link to a Bible quiz. Give it a shot at http://www.gotoquiz.com/ultimate_bible_quiz

    The quiz reminds me of a book I’m reading now, a review copy of a book coming out next month, called “Religious Literacy” — it’s a fascinating book saying that knowing about religions in the U.S. isn’t only a religious matter, but also a civic matter. That book includes a quiz about the major religions that the writer gives to his college students. I plan on reviewing the book for the Times Union when it comes out.

  • Judging a book by its cover

    dsouza.jpgMy colleague Casey Seiler handed me this book the other day and said, “Here’s a title that is purely meant to get D’Souza on talk shows.”

    Sure, it’s just not right to judge a book by its cover. But with something like 172,000 books published last year in the U.S. (I think I saw this figure in Publishers Weekly), readers have to filter through the onslaught somehow.

    Here’s what a reviewer says about the above book in the NYTimes:

    He is a childish thinker and writer tackling subjects about which he knows little to make arguments that reek of political extremism. His book is a national disgrace, a sorry example of a publishing culture more concerned with the sensational than the sensible.

    The reviewer is Alan Wolfe, who teaches political science at Boston College and is the author of “Does American Democracy Still Work?”

  • NBCC finalists

    Here’s the list of finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, to be announced in March:

    Nonfiction:
    Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso)
    Anne Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade (Penguin Press)
    Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press)
    Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (Ecco)
    Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury)

    Fiction
    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (Knopf)
    Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Grove/Atlantic)
    Dave Eggers, What is the What (McSweeney’s)
    Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land (Knopf)
    Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Knopf)

    Memoir/Autobiography
    Donald Antrim, The Afterlife (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
    Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (Houghton Mifflin)
    Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards (Delacorte)
    Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (HarperCollins)
    Teri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

    Poetry
    Daisy Fried, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again. (University of Pittsburgh Press)
    Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory. (Margie/Intuit House)
    Miltos Sachtouris, Poems (1945-1971) (Archipelego Books)
    Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
    W.D. Snodrass, Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions)

    Criticism
    Bruce Bawer: While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the WestFrom Within (Doubleday)
    Frederick Crews, Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays (Shoemaker & Hoard)
    Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon(Viking)
    Lia Purpura, On Looking: Essays (Sarabande Books)
    Lawrence Wechsler, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences(McSweeney’s)

    Biography
    Debby Applegate: The Most Famous Man in Amerca: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Doubleday)
    Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (Simon& Schuster)
    Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography (Little, Brown)
    Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (St.Martin’s Press)
    Jason Roberts, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler (HarperCollins)

  • Russell Banks featured in Mahmoud Darwish doc

    From a Web site calling itself IranMania:

    The documentary has a flashback to 2002 when eight internationally renowned writers, poets, and intellectuals, including American novelist Russell Banks and Nobel laureates Jose Saramago and Wole Soyinka, traveled to the West Bank and Gaza to visit Darwish and observe the state of the Palestinians living there.

    Click “more” for complete article:

    (more…)

  • Events on Monday, Jan. 22

    At the Saratoga Springs Public Library ( 49 Henry St., Saratoga Springs NY 584-7860), the reading group, Writers on Reading, welcomes Susannah Risley who will read her own work and lead a discussion of The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Free and open to the public.

  • Biblio Files columnist wants your help

    Donna Liquori also writes in today’s column:

    I’m looking for some examples from fellow bibliophiles for an upcoming column on books that
    have changed lives. Do you reread something every year? Is there one book that set you on a
    different path? I want to know. Drop me an e-mail and a few publishable sentences explaining
    why your particular book is so important. Also, drop me a line whenever you read something
    great. It doesn’t have to be a new book. I’m looking to broaden my recommendations throughout 2007. Thanks and Happy New Year.

    You can contact her at bilbiofiles@hotmail.com