Thursday, June 18, 2009

This Week in Reading June 14 - 20

Authors born this week:

Nobel Prize in Literature
Storywriter, playwright, novelist Yasunari Kawabata (1968)



Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Blaise Pascal, Jurgen Habermas Scientists Erik Erikson Biographers: Xaviera Hollander

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Essayists: Sylvia Porter, Leon Wieseltier, George Akerlof, Russell Ash Editors and Worders: John Robert Gregg, Katherine Graham, Peter Gilliver Journalists: John Howard Griffin, Pierre Salinger Officials: Mario Cuomo, Newt Gringrich Media and others: Pauline Kael, Delia Smith, Roger Ebert, Donald Trump, Linda Chavez, Diablo Cody

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Suspense: Rosamond Smith

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Harry Turtledove Science Fiction: Murray Leinster

Visual Artists
Illustrators:
James Montgomery Flagg, Nicholas Bentley, Chris Van Allsburg Graphic Novelists: Chris Onstad Cartoonists: Saul Steinberg Photographers: Carl Van Vechten, Margaret Bourke-White

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: W. V. Awdry, Laurence Yep, Chris Van Allsburg Teens: Brian Jacques

Events to read about this week:
Flag Day in America, Drake’s discovery of California and the short lived Bear Flag Republic in California, Babbage’s “Difference Engine,” the first Superman comic, the end of the Vatican’s ban on books, the signing of the Magna Carta, Ben Franklin proves electricity with a kite, birth dates of Geronimo, artist M. C. Escher,and designer Charles Eames, the Watergate break-in, O J’s slow chase, the invention of the chocolate chip cookie, Joan of Arc, the end of slavery in the Union, and hiding that fact from slaves in Texas, and the beginning of the Victorian Age.

This Week’s Questions:
There is an abundance of visual storytellers this week, artists who also wrote, writers who also drew, writers who wrote pictorially, writers who wrote about pictures, and writers who wrote pictures, too, one of whom won an Academy Award for it. Of whom are the following written?

"Every picture in this book has a story to tell that is worth the telling."

"There are many exquisitely visual passages ..." [The author] "presents these elements with a poetic style sometimes described as a series of linked haiku."

"The artist eyes of the author were quick to note gorgeous cloud effects and other scenic beauty, and his pen preserves the impressions and passes them on to the reader."

The "work of a master; stunning, luminescent and conveying a sense of the mystical and magical."

A "writer of pictures, an architect of speech and sounds, a draftsman of philosophical reflections."

One movie critic was a "yearly presence at the noted Cannes Film Festival in France ... published an account of the event ... which [the critic] also illustrated" [and] "ventured into fiction in 1993 with ... a murder mystery serial spoofing Hollywood."

The other one "would not just describe or critique a film but confront it—as if ... bringing to bear everything [the critic] knew about movie history and all [the critic's] intelligence and critical and literary talent."
Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
"I am very foolish over my own book. I have a copy which I constantly read and find very illuminating." - William Butler Yeats

"There certainly does seem to be the possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks." - Dorothy L. Sayers

"You write a book, you invest your imagination in it, and then you hand it over to a bunch of people who have no imagination and no understanding of their own enterprise." - Saul Bellow

"There's only one person a writer should pay any attention to. It's not any damn critic. It's the reader." - William Stryon

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Everyone knows it's Yasunari Kawabata!

Bill, Reference Librarian said...

And others, as you can see. Thanks for reading and commenting!

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