Posts by Hyacinth Persad

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 The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberg, and asked the participants whether they had heard of this title, which remained on the New York Times' Bestseller List for many weeks a few years ago.

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 driver did not leave the station. The train stopped, but the doors didn't open immediately, and I 

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 The Tao of Travel. In it, he surveys travel writings and includes excerpts from a variety of writers, including the essayist and novelist, Pico Iyer. A short time after completing Theroux's book, I happened to 

Perhaps 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.

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. The New York Public Library, in collaboration with Lighthouse International, the Xavier Society for the Blind, and 

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 briefly discussed how new words are formed, how old ones change, and even how the dinosaurs among them become extinct.  Did you know that the color, puce, has a Greek origin; that “Serendip” is the former name of Sri Lanka, and that