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.