Posts by Hyacinth Persad

If you can tear yourself away from the scenery, read one of these nonfiction selections on train travel.

It was fortuitous that I heard Pico Iyer explaining the origins of his first, last and middle names to Krista Tippett on her radio show, On Being. I've been waiting to read whatever his newest book would be ever since I wrote the post on Traveling Vicariously with Pico Iyer.

In the fall of 2011, I wrote a blog post on the books I had been reading by Pat Conroy. On that post I also linked to Pat Conroy's then recently created blog, where, under the heading, "My Blogging Life," he announced that he was at work on a new book, The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son. The book, published October 29, 2013 is a memoir, and a sequel to the fiction work, 

I recently caught the end of an NPR program that hosted the author Aleksandar Hemon. Upon hearing the gentle sound of his voice on the radio speaking about his newest and first work of non-fiction, The Book of My Lives, I immediately placed it on reserve. When the book arrived and I saw the cover art, there was a picture of what Hemon describes as a blue alien, and though still prepared to read the 

Charles Salzberg, faculty member, and one of the founders of the New York Writer's Workshop, gave a one-evening seminar at the Mid-Manhattan Library on December 11th. Sign-ups for the evening's seminar closed at the 15 people who registered online at the New York Public Library's website, but Mr. Salzberg graciously allowed in 9 more people. To introduce the program, I brought two copies of 

On a recent Saturday evening feeling, sluggish because of a lingering cold, I still walked briskly to the Bryant Park subway station. I needed to arrive at the West 4th Street subway station to catch the 6:20, which later became the 6:29 "A" train to Far Rockaway, Queens. Sitting in the first car, I felt the train moving jerkily between stations. Just before the train left the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station, I felt and heard the pounding of many-hands on the side of the train's first car — the people on the station's platform were doing all they could to ensure that the 

Fresh from my mid-winter cruise, and a bit disappointed because the ship did not make one of its appointed stops in the Cayman Islands due to stormy weather, I was looking for something new to read, especially if it had to do with travel. Back on terra firma, and ignoring my "For Later" shelf (books to read later), a feature which I use on the New York Public Library's newly acquired interface to the catalog, Bibliocommons, I picked up Paul Theroux's

patconroy.comPerhaps you've read books by Pat Conroy, or, like me you are a newcomer to his works. While retrieving My Reading Life for a library user, I picked up another copy that was on the shelf. So began the second half of my serendipitous summer reading.

In My Reading Life, Conroy shares with us the books that have influenced him thus far — one was Look Homeward, 

Shortly after landing in New York City from Greece, Fotis Flevotomos walked into Mid-Manhattan Library on June 11, 2011. As Brigid Cahalan, The New York Public Library's Outreach Coordinator, was showing him the space in the Corner Room where his art would adorn the shelves from June 11 through June 23, I was staffing the Popular Library Desk and thought that he must have been jet-lagged — if he was, that didn't stop him from installing all of his pieces that day. Flevotomos's art was on display as part of the Low Vision and Blindness Resource Day.

On a rainy, spring evening in May, Patricia T. O’Conner, former editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of Woe is I  and Origins of the Specious gave a talk at the Mid-Manhattan Library, for the 4th year in a row, entitled, “How Words Evolve… a Darwinian look at the English Language."  You might think a talk on grammar would be drab—it was anything but.  She