This Week in Reading November 22 - 28

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist Andre Gide (1947)

Novelists and story writers
Laurence Sterne, George Eliot, Carlo Collodi, Eca de Queiros, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Helen Hooven Santmyer, Dawn Powell, Nancy Mitford, Jin Ba, Alberto Moravio, James Agee, Randolph Stow, Marilynne Robinson, Alexis Wright, Arturo Perez, Ahmadou Koroouma, Arundhati Roy

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: William Cowper, William Blake, Alexandr Blok, Paul Celan Playwrights: Felix Lope de Vega, Stefan Zweig, Guy Bolton. Eugene Ionesco, Garson Kanin

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Baruch Spinoza, Friedrich Engels, Claude Levi Strauss Believers: John Bunyan, Hal Lindsey Scientists: Norbert Weiner, Lewis Thomas, Keith Ablow Historians: Charles A. Beard, Jennifer Michael Hecht Biographers: John Bigelow, Ishmael Beah

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Terry Gilliam, Bruce Vilanch, Jon Stewart Essayists: Dale Carnegie, William F. Buckley, Jr., Guy Davenport, Gail Sheehy, Harry Edwards, Dervla Murphy, Thomas B. Kohnstamm Editors and Critics: Thomas Cook, Ward Morehouse Journalists: Gail Collins, Caroline Kennedy Officials: Gary Hart, Chuck Schumer Media and Others: Harpo Marx, Ben Stein, Dick Morris, Sam Seder

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Robert Barnard, Valerie Wilson Wesley

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: L. Sprague De Camp, Victor Pelevin, Steven Brust Science Fiction: Nelson Slade Bond, Forrest J. Ackerman, Frederick Pohl, Poul Anderson, Spider Robinson

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Historical Fiction: Nigel Tranter

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Roy Thomas, Marjane Satrapi, John Kovalic Cartoonists: Charles Schulz, Roz Chast

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: P. D. Eastman, Tom Ungerer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Henkes, Jenna Bush

Events to read about this week:
Happy Thanksgiving, thanks to Andrew Carnegie for all the library buildings, but President Kennedy and Harvey Milk were assassinated; while Life magazine, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Motown's Berry Gordon all started life.

This Week’s Questions:

Which author born this week said this?: "Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out."

Of which other one was the following said?: " ... difficult art at its best is so fine, so beautifully a-shimmer with wit and nonsense and gaity, that it creates a standard of its own."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

Humorist, columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, who is responsible for the librarian - like quote among dozens of others, and comic playwright George S. Kaufmann were both founding members of the Algonguin Round Table of wits in New York in the 1920s and 1930s. Comic actor Harpo Marx, born this week, became a member as well though he never published anything, nor let the general public hear what he had to say, until he published his autobiography, Harpo Speaks. It is one of the most enjoyable bios ever, showing that he belonged there among the literary wits.

This Week in Reading November 15 - 21

The National Book Awards for 2009 were announced this week, including the most loved National Book Award book in sixty years of fiction as voted by today's public.

Fiction - Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

Poetry - Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: a trilogy

Nonfiction - T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: the epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Young People's Literature - Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: twice toward justice

The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction - Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

Distinguished Contribution to American Letters - Gore Vidal

Literarian Award - Dave Eggers

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist Selma Lagerlof (1909); poet, novelist, playwright Gerhart Hauptmann (1912); novelist, poet, story writer Nadine Gordimer (1991); poet, novelist Jose Saramago (1998)

Novelists and story writers
Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes, Joan Lindsay, Klaus Mann, Marilyn French, J.G. Ballard, Chinua Achebe, Vassilies Vassilikos, Rodney Hall, Auberon Waugh, Don de Lillo, Margaret Atwood

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Marianne Moore, Allen Tate, Nazim Hikmet, Dalie Ravikovitch, Victoria Tokareva, Sharon Olds Playwrights: William S. Gilbert, George S. Kaufman

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Voltaire, Jacques Maritain, Robert Nozick Scientists: Lev Vygotsky, Benoit Mandelbrot Historians: Shelby Foote Biographers: Danny Wallace

Humorists, Essayists, Editors and Critics, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Clarence Day, Franklin Pierce Adams, Peter Cook Essayists: Wyndham Lewis, Peter Drucker, Tahir Shah Editors and Critics: Arthur Quiller-Couch, Sacheverell Sitwell, Christopher Tolkien Journalists: Rita Cosby, Christopher Noxon Officials: Norman Thomas, Robert F. Kennedy, Joe Biden, Howard Dean Media and Others: Lee Strasberg, George Gallup, Alistair Cooke, Larry King, Jack Welch, Dick Cavett, Ted Turner, Marlo Thomas, Rupaul, Rocco DiSpiritu

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Suspense: Richard Marcinko

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Christopher Paolini Horror: Science Fiction: Alan Dean Foster

Adventure / Westerns
Westerns: Jack Schaeffer

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Alan Moore, Jill Thompson Manga: Cartoonists: Chester Gould

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Elizabeth George Speare Teens: Robin McKinley

Events to read about this week:
The Articles of Confederation, Sherman’s March to the Sea, painters Rene Magritte and Georgia O’Keeffe, the Warsaw Ghetto, the Elizabethan Age, the first Congress, the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore in Paris, Twain's jumping frog contest, Mickey Mouse, The Gettysburg Address, The impeachment of Bill Clinoton, Dia de los Revolucion, The man the Hubble telescope was named for, the Nuremburg Trials, Longfellow’s first pubication, Edison’s phonograph, and Einstein's famous formula.

This Week’s Questions:
How many of this week's authors were members of the Algonguin Round Table in New York? Which one of them said what most librarians can say? "I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
"Either you or I, but both together is out of the question!" While it’s perfectly understandable you may have thought that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it in his novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it was Fyodor Dostoyevsky whose short novel, The Double, depicted the case of a government clerk who is driven mad by confronting a sudden doppelganger of himself. In his mind, the double steals his identity and ruins his good name by acting badly in society as if he was the original.

While the Russians of the nineteenth century were not specifically Victorians there was certainly a strain in that century’s literature, from Gogol through Chekhov, coincident with the burgeoning field of psychology, of beginning to deal with the complex dualities of human nature. Europe caught on as well, and American writers began to explore these threads of psychological understanding tentatively in the last century. Dualities are now bursting forth in speculative and fantasy fiction and visual entertainment reflecting the psychological impact of America's social and political tensions.

This Week in Reading November 8 - 14, 2009

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist Imre Kertesz

Novelists and story writers
Oliver Goldsmith, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Winston Churchill, Arnold Zweig, Margaret Mitchell, John Moore, Eric Malpass, Howard Fast, Kurt Vonnegut, Carlos Fuentes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mary Gaitskill, Katherine Weber

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Frederic Schiller, Jose Hernandez, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Vachel Lindsay, Anne Sexton Playwrights: Martha Gellhorn, Ronald Harwood, Garry Marshall, Wallace Shawn

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Believers: Martin Luther, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Scientists: Carl Sagan, Amory Lovins, Michael Fitzgerald Historians: Frederick Jackson Turner, C. Vann Woodward, Alistair Horne, Biographers: David Bret

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Marc Favreau, P. J. O’Rourke Essayists: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Naomi Wolf, Ayaan Hirsi, Ali Editors and Critics: Roland Barthes Journalists: Dorothy Day, Harrison Salisbury, Morley Safer, Peter Arnett, Tracy Kidder Officials: Louis Brandeis, Barbara Boxer Media and Others: Whoopi Goldberg, Gordon Ramsay

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: John P. Marquand

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Michael Ende, Neil Gaiman Science Fiction: Stephen Baxter

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Historical Fiction: F. van Wyck Mason

Visual Artists
Illustrators: William Hogarth Graphic Novelists: Rivkah Cartoonists: Bill Mantlo Manga: Mashashi Kishimoto

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Jacob Abbott, Astrid Lindgren, William Steig Teens: Neal Shusterman

Events to read about this week:
The Bodelian Library, the Marine Corps, Teddy Bears, and Sesame Street get started; the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and Moby Dick get published; Germany undergoes the Nazi Kristalnacht and the Berlin Wall falling down; the Mayflower Compact is made and Veterans are honored; Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, and George Patton are born; Tim Berners-Lee explains the World Wide Web.

This Week’s Questions:

This week gives us some major authors of classic gothic fiction. Today's sexually tinged vampires are currently the entertainment and publishing world's big thing. They are obviously drawn from Bram Stoker's classic Dracula, but Stoker himself was actually almost prudish and he would be surprised at what psychological traits could be seen to be lying underneath his character's surfaces.

In that vein, which other writer born this week, far beyond standard, had one character say the following to his inner double? "Either you or I, but both together is out of the question!" It may not be the one you think.

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously." - Albert Camus

"A man said to the universe:

'Sir, I exist!'

'However,' replied the universe,

'The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation." - Stephen Crane

"All art is a revolt against man's fate." - Andre Malraux

This Week in Reading November 1 - 7

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature

Philosopher, novelist Albert Camus, poet Odysseus Elytis

Novelists and story writers
Stephen Crane, Sholem Asch, Robert Musil, Martin Flavin, Herman Broch, Moa Martinson, James Jones, Christopher Wood, Geoffrey Wolff, Charles Frazier, Thomas Mallon, Michael Cunningham

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: William Cullen Bryant, C. K. Williams Playwrights: Thomas Kyd, Charles MacArthur, A. R. Gurney, Sam Shepard

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Edward Said Believers: Billy Graham Historians: Will Durant, Henry Troyat, Paul Johnson

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Will Rogers Essayists: Eugene Debs, Andre Malraux, Diana E. H. Russell, Shere Hite, Stephen Greenblatt, Bernard-Henri Levy, Joe Queenan Editors: Karl Baedecker Journalists: Ida M. Tarbell, Grantland Rice, Walter Cronkite, James Reston, James Kilpatrick, Pat Buchanan, Maria Shriver Officials: Joseph C. Wilson Media and Others: Mike Nichols, Larry Flynt, Dennis Miller, Morgan Spurlock, Jenny McCarthy

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Gordon Dickson

Visual Artists
Manga: Goseki Kojimba

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Samuel Marshak Teens: Joyce Maynard

Events to read about this week:
Standard Time, Election Day, Weather Bureau, Stamp Act, Hydrogen Bomb, George Boole, first woman voter, TS Eliot naturalizes, Spruce Goose, GB Shaw theatre lights, Quiz Show scandal, federal income tax, PBS, King Tut, Guy Fawkes, Meet the Press, MOMA.

Obituaries
Spanish novelist Francisco Ayala (103)
Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (100)
Suspense novelist Lionel Davidson (87)
Illustrator Don Punchatz (73)

This Week’s Questions:
Who, born this week, said:

"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously. "

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

"All art is a revolt against man's fate."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
"I like to think of poetry as statements made on the way to the grave." - Dylan Thomas

"If poetry comes not as easily as leaves from a tree, it had better not come at all." - John Keats

"Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity." - John Betjeman (Who was not born last week. Misread Berryman for Betjeman. Was on vacation, sorry. Small fonts on a borrowed laptop.)

"Words should be an intense pleasure to a writer, just as leather should be to a shoemaker." - Evelyn Waugh