book reviews Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Events calendar for December 2025 (mostly)

Nov 25| Book Review | Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. Reviewer: Roger Green (moi)

The events calendar for December 2025, and a bit before, includes me! All book reviews/author talks at Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue, at 2 pm, EXCEPT the holiday concert on December 16, which will be at 12:30 pm.

November 25| Book Review | Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green. Reviewer: Roger Green, business librarian, retired from the NY Small Business Development Center. (Not related to John.)

December 2 | Book Review | The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz. Reviewer: Ezra Scott, Jr., MA, MBE, is a native of Niagara Falls, NY, a public servant, an educator, & the proud father of Khari C. Scott & Exra P. Scott III.

December 9 |Author Talk | Roselee Blooston, author of four other books, both memoir & stories, discusses & reads from her book of personal essays, Including the Periphery.

December 16 | Holiday Concert with the Albany High School Choir, directed by Brendan Hoffman. THIS PROGRAM WILL START AT 12:30 PM, unlike our other programs.

December 23 | Book Review | The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence. Reviewer: Jonathan Skinner, PhD, retired statistician & amateur classicist.

December 30 | Book Review | Nadja by André Breton. Reviewer: Dan Wilcox, peace activist & noted local poet.

Art at APL Opening Reception

Friday, December 5, 2025, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm

Pine Hills branch of the Albany Public Library, 517 Western Avenue

Countenance: The Contemporary Portrait, December 5- May 9, 2025

Nuveen Barwari, Judith Braun, Maggie Halloran, John Hampshire, Phil Knoll, Mark McCarty, Philip J. Palmieri, Winosha Steele, Felicia van Bork, Oliver Wasow

More info HERE.

Sunday, December 14

Join us for an afternoon of music and history in support of the Underground Railroad Education Center. Arias in the Afternoon: Lifting Every Voice

Join MC Rex Smith for the beauty of Handel’s Messiah with a performance by Daniel Pascoe Aguilar alongside the Smithsonian’s Voices and Votes exhibit, as we confront our complex history and continue the fight for education and truth.

December 14, 2025
1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
New York State Museum
4th Floor Terrace

AND

Ballad of the Brown King – Margaret Bonds

Seven Carols for Christmas – Alice Parker

December 14, 2025

2:30 Art display
3 p.m. Concert (see poster above)
First Presbyterian Church at the corner of State and Willett in Albany, NY

The library asks, in three parts

Managing Chronic Illness

I have three library asks today for you folks in the Capital District of New York State.

Please join us for a meeting to discuss the future of the Tuesday Book Talks that have been taking place at noon at the Washington Avenue branch for many years. The conversation, taking place on MONDAY, MARCH 13 AT 5 PM at the WASHINGTON AVE AUDITORIUM will address questions about the venue, the time of day, and how to promote the events better. More details can be found here.

We’re looking for speakers for May and June. Those events WILL take place at the usual time noted above. We want authors to talk about their books, or speakers who wish to review other people’s books. Contact me at this post or by Facebook or email.

Upcoming talks

Feel free to promote these events on your social media.

March 7 | Author Talk | Frank S. Robinson, JD, discusses and reads from his book, The American Crisis: Chronicling and Confronting the Trump Shitstorm.

March 14 | Book Review | Milkweed Smithereens by Bernadette Mayer. Reviewer: Bob Sharkey, poet & member of the board, Hudson Valley Writers Guild.

March 21 | Book Review | Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum by Edward T. O’Donnell. Reviewer: Joseph Krausman, poet & long-time member of the Friends of APL.

March 28 | Book Review | African American Freedom Journey in New York and Related Sites, 1823-1870: Freedom Knows No Color by Harry Bradshaw Matthews. Reviewer: Roger Green, MLS, retired librarian, NY Small Business Development Center, & board member, FFAPL.

April 4 | Book Review | A Song Flung Up to Heaven by Maya Angelou. Reviewer: Donald “The Soul Man” Hyman, teacher, actor, singer, writer, TV host/producer, & veteran.

April 11 | A tribute to the late poet Charles Simic, who published over 60 books, won the Pulitzer Prize, & was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, by Gene Damm of FFAPL.

April 18 | Author Talk | Patricia A. Fennell, MSW, LCSW-R, scientist & clinician, discusses her book, Managing Chronic Illness Using the Four-Phase Treatment Approach: A Mental Health Professional’s Guide to Helping Chronically Ill People.

April 25 | Book Review | Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions, a graphic autobiography by Steve Martin & Cartoonist Harry Bliss. Reviewer: John Rowen, former president, Friends of APL.

Yes, that’s me in the March 28 slot. And yes, it’s the same presentation I gave at my church earlier this month.

While I’d like you to attend all of the talks, I will specifically plug my friend Patricia on April 18. And my buddy Donald on April 4 is always entertaining

October 2022 book reviews

Jon Rice on October 25

In another hyper-local post, here’s the list of October 2022 book reviews, offered by the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library.

October 4 | Book Review | Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong. Reviewer: Carl Strock, author & prize-winning journalist.

October 11 |Book Review | Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant. Reviewer: Gene Damm, former president, Friends of APL.

October 18 | Book Review | Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and OEndings by Alan Lightman. Reviewer: David Guistina, WAMC.

October 25 | Book Review | No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. Reviewer: Jon S. Rice, MSW, LCSW-R, Albany Health Management Associates, Inc.

Book reviews or author talks are offered every Tuesday at noon at the Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY.

I post this to inform you that you are welcome to attend these events. Recently, in this not-quite-post-COVID period, coffee and snacks are being offered again.

The pitch

But my ulterior motive is to offer YOU the opportunity to participate in a more substantial level. If you’re going to be in the area and would like to provide a book review, please let me know and we can work on that. I’ve conned, I mean persuaded my friend Jon Rice to give a talk on October 25.

Or, if you are a writer of books, you could give an author talk. Holly Planells McKenna was the President of the Albany Public Library Foundation from 2012 until 2020 and was the first president of the combined Friends and Foundation of Albany Public Library. In September 2022, she gave an author talk about her book Across the River Jordan: The Journey to Bring My Son Home.

We are generally scheduling these events for three months out so that they make it onto the Albany Public Library calendar. If you’re interested in doing a book review or author talk, contact me via email or Messenger on Facebook.

In-person FFAPL book reviews are back!

also, author talks

The Albany Public Library announced that is opening meeting rooms and resuming in-person programs starting Monday, April 4. This means that the book reviews conducted by the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library (FFAPL) are back every Tuesday at noon, starting April 19 at the Washington Avenue branch!

The Friends of the APL, one of the antecedents to the FFAPL, held book reviews or author talks Tuesdays every week when the library was open literally for decades. In recent years, these events were scheduled primarily by Eugene Damm and Jonathan Skinner. They continued until… well, you know what.

For a while, there was no book review programming at all. Then someone suggested that maybe we should utilize that new-fangled electronic device known as ZOOM. I got involved with this mostly because my computer was more robust than Jon’s or Gene’s, and because had retired. Some of the talks were recorded; you can find some of them here. A few we don’t have because the technology failed. A couple that was done outside at the Bach branch had too much noise from neighbors and the wind.

The Upper Hudson Library Council noted the effort that Jon and I had done in the remote world by awarding us as UHLS volunteers of the year. We were among several folks honored in June 2021, online, of course.

We’re BACK

Here’s the schedule thus far for the Tuesday talks. Albany people: if you can pass the word, it would be greatly appreciated.

19 April Book Review | Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess. Reviewer: Joseph Krausman, MA, MFA, retired policy analyst, poet, and teacher.

26 April Book Review | The Color Of Law by Richard Rothstein. Reviewer: Roger Green, a former librarian and past president of the Friends of Albany Public Library.

3 May 3 Author Talk | Pippa Bartolotti, Cornish/Welsh human rights and climate activist, discusses & reads from her poetry book, The Symmetries: Book 1 Poetic Symmetry.

10 May Book Review | The Trial of Leonard Peltier by James W. Messerschmidt. Reviewer: Larry Becker, lawyer, activist, past member of Albany’s Community Police Review Board, & producer of the Radio Free Blues Show.

17 May Book Review | Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know About the Ocean by Naomi Oreskes. Reviewer: Jonathan Skinner, Ph.D., retired statistician & amateur classicist.

24 May Book Review | A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks by Brad Edmondson. Reviewer: Tom Ellis, educator, and activist.

31 May Book Review | Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by M. E. Sarotte. Reviewer: Gene Damm, former journalist and past president of the Friends of Albany Public Library.