Tag / literature

by Michael Janairo

Review: The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Awesome. Wonderful. Confounding. Clever. Brilliant.

A coworker handed me her copy of this great Ursula K. Le Guin novel when she heard that I hadn’t read it yet. The book requires attention, and it wasn’t until I had long stretches of time was I able to get into it. New names. New places. Conflicts between people for reasons that aren’t clear at first. It is a testament to Le Guin’s world-building — the completeness a reader can feel of the places she creates on the planet Urras and the moon Annares — that I and I’m sure many other readers enjoy the process of moving through the novel and learning what things mentioned earlier mean.
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by Michael Janairo

Review: The Cut

The Cut
The Cut by George Pelecanos
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ve enjoyed other George Pelecanos’ books, especially The Turnaround, much better than this. The character Spero Lucas just seems too pretty/macho/lucky/wise/serious to feel real or to be seriously.

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by Michael Janairo

Review: Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist

Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist
Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist by Bill McKibben
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bill McKibben opens up about his mixed feelings of turning from writer about the environment to activist. A heartfelt and compelling read.

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by Michael Janairo

Big-name books on LibriVox

LibriVox, the all-volunteer effort turning public-domain books into audio files, has recently released some classics of literature:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The Autobiography of Mother Jones

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

by Michael Janairo

“Extracts from Adam’s Diary”

Among the latest releases from LibriVox — the volunteer group that publishes free audio files of public domain books — is Mark Twain’s “Extracts from Adam’s Diary,” a fun and funny collection of ruminations from humanity’s first man.

Here’s a print excerpt:

Friday

The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I
had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty
–GARDEN-OF-EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not
any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and
rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden.
Says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a
park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named
–NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to
me. And already there is a sign up:

KEEP OFF
THE GRASS

My life is not as happy as it was.

by Michael Janairo

Audiobooks review: “I Like You”

“I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence” by Amy Sedaris. Read by the author. Unabridged, 5 hours, 4 CDs. Hachette Audio. $29.98.

Early in this book about entertaining at home, Sedaris says, “Even though the word entertainment is commonly used today, to me it sounds charmingly old-fashioned, like courtship or back-alley abortion.” Those words give a pretty good sense that you are far from the world of Miss Manners.

Or are you? A lot Sedaris says is practical. She suggests that, when grocery shopping, you should buy things in boxes instead of bags, because boxes can be reused. Then again, one of her tips for a children’s party sounds like “Survivor”: drive them blindfolded about an hour away and see who could be the first to get back to the party.

Included in the book (and as a PDF) are her “self-award winning recipes.” Quirky if not always laugh-out-loud funny, “I Like You” is pleasantly twisted.

Sedaris, an accomplished performer, gives an assured reading.

Note: Can’t get enough of the Sedarises on audio? Hachette has also recently released “The Ultimate David Sedaris Box Set,” 20 CDs and 22 hours of Amy’s brother’s previously released audiobooks for $99.98.

Amy Sedaris’ official Web site.

by Michael Janairo

Audiobooks review: “Lisey’s Story”

“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.

Official Stephen King Web site.

by Michael Janairo

Black History Month: “Their Eyes Were Watching God”

eyeswatchinggod.jpg
Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937).

This novel from the Harlem Renaissance has gained in popularity in the last 30 years or so, since Alice Walker wrote an essay called “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston.”

From the Zora Neale Hurston Web site:

The epic tale of Janie Crawford, whose quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life’s joys and sorrows, and come home to herself in peace. Her passionate story prompted Alice Walker to say, “There is no book more important to me than this one.”

When first published in 1937, this novel about a proud, independent black woman was generally dismissed by male reviewers. Out of print for almost thirty years, but since its reissue in paperback edition by the University of Illionois Press in 1978, Their Eyes Were Watching God has become the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.

With haunting sympathy and piercing immediacy, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford’s evolving selfhood through three marriages. Light-skinned, long-haired, dreamy as a child, Janie grows up expecting better treatment than she gets until she meets Tea Cake, a younger man who engages her heart and spirit in equal measure and gives her the chance to enjoy life without being a man’s mule or adornment. Though Jaine’s story does not end happily, it does draw to a satisfying conclusion. Janie is one black woman who doesn’t have to live lost in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, instead Janie proclaims that she has done “two things everbody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.”

The novel also has been selected this year for the NEA’s Big Read, which libraries in the Capital Region will be taking part in. For information, go to http://www.neabigread.org/books/theireyes/theireyes07.php

You may also be interested in the following events:
The Big Read
May 4 (Friday): Biographer and scholar Lucy Anne Hurston
An Afternoon With Lucy Anne Hurston – 2:00 p.m., Guilderland Public Library, 2228 Western Avenue, Guilderland
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (United States, 2005, 98 minutes, color, DVD) film screening followed by commentary by Lucy Anne Hurston – 7:00 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus Lucy Anne Hurston, niece of major 20th century writer Zora Neale Hurston, is the author of the remarkable multimedia biography, “Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston” (2004), which consists of text, photographs, a CD, and various pieces of removable memorabilia.
Cosponsored by the Upper Hudson Library System as part of “The Big Read,”an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest.

Barbara Smith also recommends these books:

Albany Public Library
The Big Read
May 4-June 3, 2007

If you liked Their Eyes Were Watching God, you might also enjoy…..

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Lucy Hurston

*Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

*The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. DuBois

Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folktales From the Gulf State by Zora Neale Hurston
Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston

Beloved by Toni Morrison
*The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
*Sula by Toni Morrison

Miss Muriel and Other Stories by Ann Petry
*The Street by Ann Petry

Cane by Jean Toomer

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
*In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women by Alice Walker

*Black Boy by Richard Wright
Native Son by Richard Wright

Here’s a previous post on the Big Read.

Thanks especially to Barbara Smith, author and Albany Common Council member, for her recommendations for this post, and others. Also to Lisa Stevens, my co-worker, and Eleanor at Flights of Fantasy, for their contributions. You were all very helpful.

The previous authors and writings featured on this blog for Black History Month:
“The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”
Gwendolyn Brooks
August Wilson
“Our Nig” by Harriet Wilson
“Twelve Years A Slave” by Solomon Northup
“The Souls of Black Folks” by W.E.B. Du Bois
Langston Hughes
“Cane” by Jean Toomer
“The Great Negro Plot” by Mat Johnson
“Passing” by Nella Larsen
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X”
“I Have a Dream” speech”
“Sula” by Toni Morrison
“The Known World” by Edward P. Jones
“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
“The Intuitionist” by Colson Whitehead
“Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington
“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
Sonia Sanchez
“Black Girl in the Ring” by Nola Hopkinson
June Jordan
“Flight to Canada” by Ishmael Reed
Gloria Naylor
“Fledgling” by Octavia E. Butler
Chester Himes
“Apex Hides the Hurt” by Colson Whitehead

by Michael Janairo

LibriVox releases horror story collection

Dickens, Doyle, Lovecraft are among the names of LibriVox’s latest release. The link is here.

LibriVox is a volunteer effort that takes works in the public domain and records them as free audiofiles.

More about LibriVox is here.