Literary Names of Note This WeekNobel Prize in Literature: Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982)
Obituaries: Science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer (1918 – 2009) To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Venus on the Half Shell, Riverworld, Dayworld; Playwright Horton Foote (1916 - 2009) The Young Man from Atlanta.
Obituaries: Science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer (1918 – 2009) To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Venus on the Half Shell, Riverworld, Dayworld; Playwright Horton Foote (1916 - 2009) The Young Man from Atlanta.
Novelists and story writers: Allessandro Manzoni, William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, Ralph Ellison, Alan Sillitoe, Tom Wolfe, John Irving, Bret Easton Ellis, Khaled Hosseini
Poets and Playwrights: Martial, Cyrano De Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, James Merrill, Channing Pollock
Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: Hans Eysenck
Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers: Sholem Aleichem, Ring Lardner
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: James Ellroy, Robert Harris
Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Peter Straub, Steven Barnes, Mike Resnick, Patricia Kenneally-Morrison
Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: Howard Pyle, Milt Gross, Ronald Searle, Will Eisner, David Fury, Mark Evanier
Children’s / Teen Authors: Dr. Seuss, Dav Pilkey
Events to read about: Artists, musicians, and politicians: Chopin, Vivaldi, and Ravel; Botticelli, Michaelangelo, and Mondrian; Social moments: the Boston Massacre, the US Congress, Dred Scott and the Missouri Compromise, FDR’s inauguration, the Iron Curtain, and the Peace Corps.
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME begins next Sunday, March 9 so set your clocks back one hour on Saturday and lose an hour of reading. (You'll get it back in the Fall.)
This Week’s Questions: Think you know style? Who, born this week, wrote these lines?
“If I had nothing to do and to avoid getting bored I'd hole up at the school library, where they had the Aldeana collection. I read the whole thing!”
“Thus every healthy-minded child – no matter if he develops in later years to be a financier or bootmaker – is a story teller. As soon as he begins to talk he tells stories. … he dramatizes every object of his surroundings. The library shelves are files of soldiers, the rugs are islets of the seaway of the floor …and the child creates … an entire and complex work of fiction of which he is at one and the same time hero, author and public.”
“But the elder had an odd taste of her own for reading, and she took some private lessons, and read books out of the circulating library; the whole family were amazed at the number she read, and rather proud of it.”
“We were talking about books and reading, and he asked me if I liked poetry – only he called it ‘poultry’ – and I said I was wild about it and Edgar M. Guest was just about my favorite, and then I asked him if he liked Kipling and what do you think he said? He said he didn’t know; he’d never kipled.”
“I lived to read and fantasize. I shoplifted books, food, and car models.”
“If I had nothing to do and to avoid getting bored I'd hole up at the school library, where they had the Aldeana collection. I read the whole thing!”
“Thus every healthy-minded child – no matter if he develops in later years to be a financier or bootmaker – is a story teller. As soon as he begins to talk he tells stories. … he dramatizes every object of his surroundings. The library shelves are files of soldiers, the rugs are islets of the seaway of the floor …and the child creates … an entire and complex work of fiction of which he is at one and the same time hero, author and public.”
“But the elder had an odd taste of her own for reading, and she took some private lessons, and read books out of the circulating library; the whole family were amazed at the number she read, and rather proud of it.”
“We were talking about books and reading, and he asked me if I liked poetry – only he called it ‘poultry’ – and I said I was wild about it and Edgar M. Guest was just about my favorite, and then I asked him if he liked Kipling and what do you think he said? He said he didn’t know; he’d never kipled.”
“I lived to read and fantasize. I shoplifted books, food, and car models.”
Answer to Last Week’s Question: No blogger, although he would have been at least a twitterer if alive today, the often self absorbed, and ever quoting but often quoted essayist of the French Sixteenth Century was Michel de Montaigne. John Steinbeck told young authors to not edit themselves until done with the work.
Irwin Shaw kept going and would write whether he got paid or not, but he was well paid for it.
Elizabeth George reminds new writers to “suit up and show up.” She has dozens of mystery novels and one very good book of advice to writers with examples from other famous writers.
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Just wanted to let you know I enjoy BookTalk and find it interesting and informative. Lots of good stuff on here. Thanks!
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