This Week in Reading August 12 - 18

Authors born this week include some more bestselling names like Danielle Steel, Jonathan Franzen, and V. S. Naipaul from this era and Edna Ferber, John Galsworthy, and Sir Walter Scott from earlier eras. But William Goldman's movies probably reached more viewers than these talents found readers simply because of the medium he used.

And what ex-student has not perused Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" in middle school, high school, or college? Who's not heard of Ernest Thayer's Casey at the Bat, our modern mythology? And what cook does not know of Julia Child, the patron saint of American cooking?

This Week's Question: Although the IBM personal computer was introduced in 1981 and became popular because of the distribution power of the corporation which had already served the business machine market it was not the absolutely first personal computer. Can you name other products that preceded it to market? And can you name the person who wrote the first Basic program for one of the more well known attempts at creating a computer any writer could use?

Answer to Last Week's Question: The term "idyll" refers to a short poem set in a pastoral setting, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King was made up twelve such short poems about incidents in the life of King Arthur. As authors do today, the poet tells his version of the English myth in ways that speak to his Victorian contemporaries. In this way, stories centuries old live through literary retellling and every era, including this one, needs its artful word slingers, written or vocal. Anyone interested in retelling myths and old stories to today's audiences?