This Week in Reading Oct. 26 - Nov. 1

This week, as in most, there are more novelists than poets and playwrights, but only a few and several of these wrote in various forms, If you throw in story writers, essay writers, literary critics, historians, editors, biographers, politicians, celebrity journalists, and celebrity humorists it's a well rounded group.

Some of the more well known novelists are Stephen Crane, Evelyn Waugh, Sylvia Plath, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Pat Conroy. Genre writers are historical mystery writer Anne Perry, mystery writer Dick Francis, and fantasy / science fiction storyteller Frederic Brown.

Big names in poetry are John Keats, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas and Paul Valery. Restoration comedies by Richard Sheridan and fantasies by Jean Giraudoux played in many theatres. James Boswell, Henri Troyat, and Edward Said's literary ruminations have been studied in many a college.

This Week's Question: Two of this week's authors, contemporaries in the first half of the twentieth century, were extremely influential writers for patrons of libraries. Emily Post was the first name to go to for etiquette advice and Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, about how to achieve success, has been one of the most frequently requested books in libraries. Many other books have been created in their names to continue offering advice about success and behavior. Both Hill and Post published more than one book and both many wrote columns and articles for magazines. One of them even edited a magazine. Which of them, however, also wrote novels?

Answer to Last Week's Question: We asked you to look at the Recommended Reads of the Glendale Public Library online resource Novelist Plus to tell us which of twenty-seven types listed there you might like. Nothing official there, but besides the usual categories of historical mysteries, flatfoots and gumshoes, noir or cozy mysteries, amateur sleuths and police procedurals, you can find mysteries around many kinds of themes. There are mysteries with humor, mysteries with seniors, mysteries about food, about books, about dogs ...

"Woof what?" says Taz, the Glendale Library Blog Dog. "Hey, there's too many cats in here!"

Okay, about pets of many kinds. From the Novelist Plus recommender: "If you enjoy pampering your own pets, you might like these light mysteries. In some, the story is told from the animal's point of view. While in others, the owner solves the mystery."

Give it a look. Before you set your clock an hour back this Saturday night you might find a new series or mystery writer with whom you'll really like to spend your extra hour.