Michael Janairo

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  • Optimist’s upcoming events

    robinson.jpgAlbany-resident Frank S. Robinson’s will be making some appearances in support of his book: LIFE, LIBERTY, and HAPPINESS: An Optimist Manifesto.

    MONDAY, February 5, 12 Noon
    Schenectady County Public Library (McChesney Room)
    99 Clinton Street
    Schenectady, NY

    SATURDAY, February 10, 2 PM
    East Greenbush Community Library
    Community Way
    E. Greenbush, NY 12061

    The book is a comprehensive analysis of how use of reason and human freedom are the keys to living a good life and making a better world. Reader response to it has been terrific! More information can be found at http://www.fsrcoin.com/x.html

  • Audio Books: ‘The Long Tail’

    “The Long Tail,” by Chris Anderson. Read by Christopher Nissley. Unabridged, 8 hours. Hyperion Audio Books. $39.98.

    Anderson’s book-length expansion of the 2004 article he wrote for Wired, where he’s the editor in chief, offers a compelling argument for the vitality of his theory of the Long Tail, or what he calls the rise of “niche markets” in economy that has traditionally been based on “hits.”
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  • First-time novelist’s upcoming events

    First-time novelist Fay Rownell — who is now retired but worked as a physical therapist and in the secretarial field — has a couple of events coming up this weekend and later in support of her comic mystery “Death Straight Up.”

    She’ll be at the Cohoes Public Library from 10:30 am to noon on Saturday, Feb. 3, and Bookhouse in Stuyvesant Plaza from 2 to 4.

    On Feb. 10, she’ll be a the Borders bookstore at Crossgates Mall from 2 to 4 pm.

    On Feb. 24, she’ll be at the Borders on Wolf Road from 2 to 4 pm.

  • Norman Mailer in the news

    Norman Mailer’s visit to the New York State Writers Institute isn’t until May 1, but since his latest novel — The Castle in the Forest — just came out, he’s been getting plenty of press.

    Here’s a selection:
    NPR

    The narrator for Norman Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest — his first novel in a decade — is a demon posing as one of Adolf Hitler’s S.S. intelligence officers.

    The narrator writes years later about how he guided the early life of the young Hitler, from his conception to early adolescence. Mailer’s devil-narrator is smart, elegant and ironic, and recalls something of Mailer himself — since the narrator rarely meets a boundary he doesn’t break.

    Critical Mass interview

    To compare Saddam Hussein to Hitler is the kind of thinking you would do in an eighth grade civics class. You can absolutely quote me on this: I really think the level of intellectuality in George Bush’s mind is comparable to the mind of some mediocre teacher who instructs eighth grade pupils in civics. He’s a civics teacher at a middling level, at a dreary middling level.

    The Guardian (U.K.)

    The celebrated novelist Norman Mailer has walked into a critical maelstrom in Germany with the publication of his new novel – his first for 10 years – which depicts a young and adolescent Adolf Hitler.

    The Castle in the Forest, which includes the bed-wetting young Hitler known as “Adi”, has been pummelled by newspaper critics and has angered Germany’s influential Central Council of Jews, which has urged artists to finally leave the history of the dictator alone.

  • Audio Books: ‘The Night Gardener’

    The Night Gardener,” by George Pelecanos. Read by the author. Abridged, 6 hours. Hachette Audio. $29.98.
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  • Events on Tuesday, Jan. 30

    silko.jpgFrom the New York State Writers Institute Calendar:

    January 30 (Tuesday): Native American novelist Leslie Marmon Silko
    Seminar – 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
    Reading – 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
    Leslie Marmon Silko, novelist, essayist, and poet, is a major figure of the Native American literary renaissance.

    Her first novel, “Ceremony” (1977), received the American Book Award, sold three quarters of a million copies, and sparked a revolution in Native American literature.

    This year, Penguin Classics will publish a 30th Anniversary Edition of “Ceremony,” featuring a new introduction by Larry McMurtry.

  • A new blog to check out

    The Albany poet and peace activist Don Wilcox has his own brand-new blog. Check it out here.

  • Celebrate Black History Month: Poetry Reading

    On Thursday, February 15 at 7:00PM Albany Poets and The Sage Colleges will again come together to present an evening of Black history-inspired poetry at the Opalka Gallery Lecture Hall featuring The Poet Essence and others from Albany Poets and the Sage College community.

    This event is free to the public from 7:00 – 9:00PM. The Opalka Gallery is located on the Sage College of Albany campus at 140 New Scotland Ave.

    http://www.albanypoets.com/news/read.asp?newsID=216

  • Tanizaki, Kureishi and O’Toole

    tanizaki.jpgThe writer Hanif Kureishi speaks about his debt to the great Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki for his latest movie, Venus, which has garnered Peter O’Toole an Academy Award nomination. Here’s the article.