This may expose us as the geeks we are deep down inside, but we are kind of excited to see that Seattle resident and renown Science Fiction author Greg Bear will be stopping by the University District bookstore for a book reading and signing to promote his newest novel Mariposa. This book which appears to stray a bit from his typical science fiction roots, is about a rouge corporation who may be succeeding at the expense of American society.

Greg Bear’s past work includes notable novels Eon, Legacy, and Darwin’s Radio (pictured to the left). The author will be at the book store on Thursday, Nov 12th, at 7pm. More details can be found here.

Imagine you are driving down the street, you stop at a light. One moment you are staring at the red globe waiting for your turn to go and the next your vision is overcome with a wall of white light. This is how the epic and fascinating Blindness by Jose Saramago begins. Quickly the new symptom spreads through the population, infecting young and old, healthy and sick, with immediate and all-encompassing blindness. Jose Saramago’s book is a strangely believable and enthralling portrayal of life in a society coping with this new aliment and the topsy-turvy world that results. Jose Saramago received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1998 and this novel is a great accessible book if you looking to begin exploring his work. Next time you come in to the salon to get your hair colored, we recommend bringing a copy of this great read.

Last year, the book was made in a major motion picture. While it did a poor job of translating the subtleties of character and behavior into film, it is an worthy film to watch in its own right. We recommend reading the far more rewarding book first however! Here is the trailer below:

Cormac McCarthy’s deep dark novel “The Road” is a entrancing journey through a post-apocalyptic world. It follows the trek of a father/son pair through the struggle to survive and eventually reach the ocean. The world that McCarthy envisioned is filled with danger, fear and the left over remains of a once great civilization. While The Road is dark and at times even depressing, it is hard to put down once you get started. In line with McCarthy’s other novel No Country For Old Men, The Road is also being made into a major motion picture. The expected release is October 16th, I recommend you give the book a read now!

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is one of the great novels of the Cyberpunk genre. Written in 1992, Snow Crash depicts an online world called the Metaverse that in many ways was very prescient of our current environment (Second Life, Facebook, etc) and where we are quickly heading.

Beyond its depiction of the future of computing, the novel is a very well written, filled with witty and endearing prose including an entire diatribe on the belief of everyman that at some point in his life he could become worlds biggest badass. He also paints a semi-distopian world where government and religions have devolved into a series of dysfunctional businesses and the Mafia pretty much rules everything.

Keep in mind that with a main character named Hiro Protagonist who is a part time hacker and ninja, the book is rife with cliches, but most of these were included before they ever became cliches. With the exception of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Snow Crash is probably the most definitive novel in the entire cyberpunk genre.

Wow how the times change! You can now subscribe to our Emerson Salon blog updates right on your very own Kindle electronic book reading device. So if you love reading our updates and want to keep getting them while you are on the go, this might be the right solution for you. Even if not, go check out our awesome page on the Amazon website!

Also, if you don’t yet own a Kindle, you can also get our blog updates easily on your iPhone through the free Amazon Kindle app. Pretty nifty. Do any of you have a Kindle or Kindle app for your iPhone? How do you like it?

Max Brook’s novel, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, is a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read. The pace was fast, taking only a few days of casual reading to finish, and took a sufficiently novel approach to the extremely well tred Zombie genre to be very engaging. Rather than telling his story through the antics of a single lead character, the book is instead told though a series of interviews with the survivors of the Zombie war. Through these various accounts, the author is able to weave together a picture of how the Zombie war progressed around the world.

For the most part, the author did a fairly believable depiction of world events given the fantastical development of zombies, including Israel’s rapid fire response, China’s attempt to cover it all up, and the feet dragging and confusion in the US. The one thing that I didn’t get though, was the apparent ability of Zombies to survive at bone crushing depths at the bottom of the ocean. Still, small issues aside, this is a great read and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Zombie genre. And given recent events in Fremont; I would expect that is a lot of you!

As stylists, sometimes our jobs have absolutely nothing to do with hair but in supporting and listening to our clients’ about their day, their lives, their jobs, etc.

We, at Emerson, are here for you as a team and want to positively support everyone who crosses our threshold (as well as those we work for and with.)

The book “Living with Joy,” has some poignant thoughts on creating the life you want. Here are some points to share:

• When you are presented with a challenge: Center and magnetize yourself to things/thoughts that are in alignment with your inner being
• Believe in abundance in your life
• One of the greatest gifts in life is allowing and opening to those who love you.
• Laugh and play. Its not the end of the world if something doesn’t go right.
• How you treat yourself is how other people will treat you.
• Know that you are a special being!
• True inner peace comes only from within.
  
• Whatever you pay attention to is what you create.
• Detach from outcome and release others from your expectations.
• Love is the food of the Universe.
  
• Life need not be hard.