Sunday, December 2, 2007

This Week In Reading December 2 - 8

There are no Nobel Prizewinners this week but there is the writer for whom a semi-major prize has been irregularly, and now annually, awarded. It is given out at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, where its benefactor often supped with other literary wits. This year's winner of the Thurber Prize for American humor, in honor of James Thurber , was given to Joe Keenan for his novel, My Lucky Star.

Just about every style of writing is on display this week from science writing, to poetry, to humor, to literary, to reference, and there are at least two hearts of darkness on display this week.

This Week's Question: Which author this week is responsible for Taz, the Blog Dog's second favorite quote? "If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." If that's tough, try this one for the next election, same person: "Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness."


Answer to Last Week's Question: "One can deliver a satire with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the travesty." was delivered, of course, by Mark Twain. In "A Couple of Sad Experiences," 1870, he laments having been mistaken by readers who "only read a little of the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious."

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