Michael Janairo

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Category: Reading

  • Local books: “Macrolife”

    ‘Macrolife’, one of the best sci-fi books, is back

    Delmar-resident George Zebrowski’s 1979 novel “Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia,” hailed by Library Journal as one of the top 100 science fiction books ever, has been recently reissued (PYR; 284 pages; $25 for limited edition hardcover; $15 paperback).

    The story combines the best elements of science fiction — a well-imagined world where the philosophical questions about the human struggle to survive play out. In particular, the novel centers around utopian space habitats that are both mobile and self-reproducing.

    The action of the story takes place in three time periods: the near future, a thousand years from now and a hundred billion years from now, all the while showing how this technology transforms what it means to be human.

    None other than British sci-fi writer Ian Watson, whose career includes the screen story of Steven Speilberg’s “AI,” says in the book’s introduction, ” ‘Macrolife’ is a major vision of social intelligence transforming the cosmos.”

  • After Alex Rider, “Maximum Ride”

    Now that my stepson has read all of Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider books and must wait until November for the next one to come out, he is zooming through James Patterson’s Maximum Ride books.

    This is from the James Patterson Web site:

    STRAP YOURSELF IN for the thrill ride you’ll want to take again and again! From Death Valley, California, to the bowels of the New York City subway system, you’re about to take off on a heart-stopping adventure that will blow you away…

    YOUR FAITHFUL COMPANIONS: Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gasman, and Angel. Six kids who are pretty normal in most ways – except that they’re 98 percent human, 2 percent bird. They grew up in a lab, living like rats in cages, but now they’re free. Aside, of course, from the fact that they’re prime prey for Erasers – wicked wolflike creatures with a taste for flying humans.

    THE MISSIONS: Rescue Angel from malicious mutants. Infiltrate a secret facility to track down the flock’s missing parents. Scavenge for sustenance. Get revenge on an evil traitor. And save the world. If there’s time.

    There’s been two books so far: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment; and Maximum Ride: School’s Out-Forever. Perhaps Patterson, who is already wildly popular with adults, is tapping into the Alex Rider readership, considering his books came out in 2005 and 2006, while Alex Rider first appeared in 2000.

    But unlike the next Alex Ride, which won’t be out until next school year, Maximum Ride’s next tome is due in May.

    And how do you know that Patterson is a publishing empire, he has a Web site like this.

    Now, if I can only get my stepson to read “The Outsiders” that I gave him as a gift a while ago…

  • Black History Month: Langston Hughes

    langstonhughes.jpgThis image of Langston Hughes (1902 to 1967) was taken by Gordon Parks in 1943 and copied from the Library of Congress.

    Langston Hughes was one of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer and newspaper columnist.

    This is one of his most famous poems (from the Poetry Foundation Web site). It was first published in 1951:

    Harlem
    by Langston Hughes

    What happens to a dream deferred?

    Does it dry up
    like a raisin in the sun?
    Or fester like a sore—
    And then run?
    Does it stink like rotten meat?
    Or crust and sugar over—
    like a syrupy sweet?

    Maybe it just sags
    like a heavy load.

    Or does it explode?

    More information about Hughes is available:
    Poet.org
    Thompson Gale
    Red Hot Jazz

  • Local books: “Baseball Without Borders”

    Essays show baseball an international hit

    Can’t wait for the baseball season to begin? Then it is the perfect time to read about baseball.

    Union College anthropology professor George Gmelch returns to the game in his latest book, “Baseball Without Borders: The International Pastime” (University of Nebraska Press; 326 pages; $19.95).

    The collection of essays Gmelch edited aims to expand Americans’ understanding of baseball by showing how it has been adopted in 14 countries, and not just the usual suspects like Japan and Cuba, but also unexpected places such as Holland, Italy and Australia.

    “The essays are diverse not only in the cultures they describe,” Gmelch writes in the introduction, “but also in the perspectives adopted by their authors who range from anthropologists to historians, from journalists to English professors, with a few independent scholars as well.”

  • Events for Wednesday, Feb. 7

    Julie Lomoe is a published poet and a regular at various open mike readings throughout the Capital Region. She’s also an accomplished artist, whose paintings were on exhibit at the original Woodstock Art and Music Fair at Bethel in 1969. (Yes, there really was an art exhibit held in conjunction with the massive rock festival).

    On Wednesday, she’ll be the FEATURED POET AT CAFFE LENA! Text of the announcement from Caffe Lena follows:

    Caffe Lena Poetry Open Mic
    Wednesday, February 7
    Doors open at 7, reading starts at 7:30
    Featured Poet
    Julie Lomoe!!
    $2

    hosted by Carol Graser
    Caffe Lena, 47 Phila St. Saratoga Springs
    583-0022
    www.caffelena.org

  • Interview with Paul Block

    masada.jpgPaul Block, the senior producer at timesunion.com, is also the co-author with Robert Vaughan of the new religious thriller “The Masada Scroll,” to be released today by Forge Books.

    The books blog recently sat down with Paul to talk about his book. Click on the videos below to hear and see the interview, in two parts.

    Part 1.

    Part 2.

    For more coverage, read story from today’s Times Union.

    Keep an eye out on the blog as Paul plans on posting entries about the what it’s like having a new book come out.

  • Black History Month: “The Souls of Black Folks”

    dubois.gifW.E.B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folks, 1903.
    William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Mass., and by the time he died in 1963 had become one of the most influential black writers ever in America, due largely to the work he is known best for, The Souls of Black Folks.

    The collection of essays in the book is both a seminal work in the field of sociology and in the study of African-American culture. In it, Du Bois coins the term “double-consciousness”

    After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
    The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

    The complete text of this book is available for free from such sources as Project Gutenburg and Bartleby.com.

    Special thanks goes to Barbara Smith, author and member of the Albany Common Council, for her suggestion.

  • Most requested books for January at UHLS

    pluml.gifFollowing in order is a list of the ten most requested books in UHLS for January 2007 (The UHLS is a cooperative association of 29 libraries in Albany and Rensselaer counties.)

    1. PLUM LOVIN’ by Janet Evanovich

    2. STEP ON A CRACK by James Patterson

    3. STALEMATE by Iris Johansen

    4. CROSS by James Patterson

    5. ABOUT ALICE by Calvin Trillin

    6. SHADOW DANCE: A NOVEL by Julie Garwood

    7. THE GLASS CASTLE: A MEMOIR by Jeannette Walls

    8. THE INNOCENT MAN: MURDER & INJUSTICE IN A SMALL TOWN by John Grisham

    9. THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER by Kim Edwards

    (tie)

    10. ELDEST by Christopher Paolini

    11. NEXT: A NOVEL by Michael Crichton

    This list is courtesy of Philip W. Ritter, Executive Director, Upper Hudson Library System.

  • Black History Month: “Twelve Years A Slave”

    northrup.jpgSolomon Northup’s 1853 autobiography, “Twelve Years A Slave.”

    In Saratoga Springs, a plaque near the corner of Congress Street and Broadway memorializes the kidnapping of Solomon Northup. In 1841, the Saratoga County man was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. A delegation from New York some of them affiliated with Union College in Schenectady was eventually able to get Northup released. He returned to the Capital Region and wrote of his experiences in the book “Twelve Years a Slave.”

    The first chapter of the book speaks of his family’s history, which he traces back to a Northup slave-owner in Rhode Island.

    The second chapter begins innocently enough:

    ONE morning, towards the latter part of the month of March, 1841, having at that time no particular business to engage my attention, I was walking about the village of Saratoga Springs, thinking to myself where I might obtain some present employment, until the busy season should arrive

    Then he relates his abduction and being sold into slavery in New Orleans.

    The full text is available online here.

    Northup’s story was also made into a movie.
    solomonodyssey.jpg
    The film starred Avery Brooks and was directed by Gordon Parks.