This Week in Reading March 8 - 14

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: Poet George Seferis (1963).

Novelists and story writers: Hugh Walpole, Douglas Wallop, Jack Kerouac, Dave Eggers, Christopher Rice.

Poets and Playwrights: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Mahmoud Darwish, Horton Foote, Edward Albee, David Rabe.

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: George Berkeley, Albert Einstein.

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers: Richard Steele, Gene Fowler, Peter Quennell, Neal Postman, John McPhee, Bob Greene.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Mickey Spillane, Carl Hiaasen.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Algernon Blackwood, L. Ron Hubbard, Douglas Adams, Tad Williams.

Children’s / Teen Authors: Kenneth Grahame.

Events to read about: Economics both good and bad; Industry both good and bad, fads and excesses, Frankenstein, Barbie, Murrow and McCarthy; fine literature, fine dancer, fine duck.

This Week’s Questions: “Reading is to the mind as exercise is the body” was written by one of this week's authors who believes as we do. He also suggested, “No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience”

Along those lines another author said this. “If you’re a singer, you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes.”

One of them possibly suggested (in an interview we can't source) there might be more to it than that. "Writing should be useful. If it can't instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness there's no point in doing it."

Another wrote: "I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." Who were they?

Answers to Last Week’s Questions:

As a boy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez read everything he could find at the library.

Prolific novelist, story writer, and literary article author Frank Norris believed every child is a natural story teller.

Refined novelist and editor William Dean Howells described the reading habits of the daughter of his title character in The Rise of Silas Lapham.

Humorist Ring Lardner joked about the lack of reading knowledge his sports character Jack Keefe possessed.

Crime writer James Ellroy , who seldom writes in paragraphs, wrote fast words about his fast life in his book Destination Morgue: LA tales.