This Week in Reading June 1 -7

There's lots of literature from all over the place this week but there's no one special form that seems to override other forms for a theme. We have the very literary: Thomas Hardy, Thomas Mann, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Margaret Drabble. And we have the very popular: Colleen McCullough, Larry McMurtry, Marion Zimmer Bradley and V. C. Andrews. There are plenty of other authors new and old that fall in between.

This Week's Question: Appropriately, as this is the week that Scott McClellan's, What Happened, comes out, which other author born this week was also a presidential press secretary?

Answer to Last Week's Question: "You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world," was spoken by none other than the great humorist G.K. Chesterton who left heaps and heaps of quotable lines behind in his progressive, optimistic writings. Such as this librarian's mantra: "There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person." But to keep our feet on the ground we must remember he also said: "When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any."

And, unable to resist it, one more: "Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness." Read any Chesterton book and compile your own best passages of wide ranging ideas and satisfying ideals.