This Week in Reading May 31 - June 6

Authors born this week:

Nobel Prize in Literature:
Poet, novelist Karl Adolf Gellerup (1917), Novelist Thomas Mann (1929), Poet Saint-John Perse (1960)

Novelists and story writers:
Thomas Hardy, Dorothy West, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Jolley, Maurice Shadbolt, Christy Brown, Carol Shields, Margaret Drabble, Charles Dickinson, Jim Knipfel

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Alexander Pushkin, Walt Whitman, John Masefield, Allen Ginsberg Playwrights: Pierre Corneille, Federico Garcia Lorca, John Van Druten, Spalding Gray, Harvey Fierstein

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers

Believers: Norman Vincent Peale, William Sloane Coffin, Robert Fulghum Scientists: Ruth Westheimer Historians: Cornelius Ryan, James H. Billington Biographers: Marquis de Sade

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others

Humorists: Fred Allen, Sandra Bernhard, John Hodgman Essayists: Adam Smith, Bernard Goldberg, Frank Rich Lawrence Lessig Journalists: Bill Moyers, Alexander Cockburn, Ahron Bregman, John Hockenberry, Anderson Cooper, target="_blank"Chuck Klosterman Media and others: Kevin Brownlow, Matthew Lesko, Suze Orman

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers

Fantasy: V. C. Andrews, Norton Juster, Marion Zimmer Bradley

Historical Fiction / Romance / Western Writers

Historical Fiction: Colleen McCullough, Ken Follett Historical Romance Fiction: Kathleen E. Woodiwiss Westerns: Larry McMurty

Visual Artists

Graphic Novelists: Adrian Tomine

Young People’s Writers

Children’s: Richard Scarry, Paul Stewart, Cynthia Rylant Teens: Margo Lanagan, Sarah Dessen

Events to read about from the Salem witch trials to D-Day.

This Week’s Questions:

Which novelist born this week wrote a book about another novelist born this week, is the sibling of another famous novelist, and married a prominent biographer?

There are three disabled writers this week, two of whom used wheelchairs most of their adult lives, but one who was otherwise mobilized. Who are they?

Which author born this week wrote only one fifth of the novels published under that author's name? (Be careful, it seems to have happened to another of this week's authors, but not to that extent so far.)

Which author is said to have worked as a librarian?

Answers to Last Week’s Questions:

Ralph Waldo Emerson said these:

"Tis the good reader that makes the good book."

"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."

"Never read a book that is not a year old."

But G. K. Chesterton said these:

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

"A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying 'Of course, I do not like green cheese; I am very fond of brown sherry.'"

Any question now about who could have been added also to the humorist category last week?