[LAST] This Week in Reading Dec 27 - Jan. 2

Happy Holidays, readers! TWIR bids a fond adieu.

It's done now. This is the last appearance of This Week in Reading, our blog blurb for authors' birthdays. After two years it's pretty much complete. If we still have errors or omissions, (and we expect we might,) please leave a comment on the blog and let us know what we need to fix.

If you want to know which authors were born on your birthday, or someone else's, it will be still available through the Books and Reading page. Just drop down the menu to the desired week.

We'll try to get more varied content up on Book Talk. Thanks for following and keep reading.

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist, storywriter, poet Rudyard Kipling (1907)

Novelists and story writers
Theodor Fontane, Mariano Azuela, Horacio Quiroga, E. M. Forster, Louis Bromfield, Robert Ruark, Paul Bowles, William Gaddis, Elyne Mitchell, J. D. Salinger, Wilfred Sheed, Manuel Puig, Michael Nesmith, Douglas Coupland, Chandle Burr, Nicholas Sparks, Wendy Coakley-Thompson

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Danil Kharms, Arthur Hugh Clough, Robert Nathan, Charles Olson, Patti Smith, Joshua Clover Playwrights: Carl Zuckmayer, Christopher Durang, Paul Rudnick

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Mortimer Adler Scientists: William Masters, Jack Hanna, Bjarne Stroussstrup Biographers: Oscar Levant, John Denver, Stanley Tookie Williams

Humorists, Essayists, Editors and Critics, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Stephen Leacock, Don Novello, Paula Poundstone, Sarah Vowell Essayists: James Frazer, Gilbert Murray, Simon Wisenthal, Ermest Tidyman, Ian Buruma Editors and Critics: Ellen Datlow Journalists: Sebastian Hafner, Brian Redhead, Lawrence Schiller, Cokie Roberts Officials: Woodrow Wilson Media and Others: Cliff Arquette, Joe Bologna, Diane von Furstenberg, Barbara Olson, Tracey Ullman, Sean Hannity, Gerina Dunwich

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Crime: Edward Bunker

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Susan Shwartz, Lewis Shiner Science Fiction: Isaac Asimov, Bob Shaw, Connie Willis

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Steve Rude, Christopher Ware, Ariel Schrag Manga: Noake Urasawa Cartoonists and Cartoon Writers: Stan Lee, B Kliban, Lynda Barry, Julie Doucet

Events to read about this week:

New Year’s Day with its Rose Parade and Rose Bowl, the birth of J. Edgar Hoover, Benazir Bhutto, first paying audience for a movie, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Endangered Species Act, Thomas a Becket's murder in a cathedral, the first freeway, Henri Matisse.

Obituaries
Film Critic Robin Wood (78); Novelist Loren Singer (86); New York Review of Books illustrator David Levine (83).

This Week’s Questions:

Can you tell us what you would like to see and read about in our Glendale Public Library Book Talk blog? Please leave a comment so we can make this blog more useful and interesting to you.

Would you send in a few lines about a book you've recently read from the Glendale Public Library and think other readers would like? (All submissions will be assessed for appropriateness and edited for size and readability as well as content restrictions but will be considered by blog editors. Please include the name of your branch library. Only a first name and last name initial will be used to identify the submitter.)

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

"If I would have realized that the stories in my head would be as intriguing to others as they were to me, I would probably have started writing sooner. Believe in your own taste." - Twilight series creator Stephenie Meyer

"There was never a question in my mind. Ever since I could hold a pencil, I wrote poems, skits, plays. We put a velvet curtain up in the garage and the garage was our stage and people sat in the driveway." - Romantic suspense mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark

Glendale History: Snow Golf, 1949

1949 started with a pleasant surprise in mid-January: snow blanketing the area for three straight days. The duo above embraced the winter wonderland for a round of golf (at the very least they took the time to run out onto the course to snap a photograph).

This photograph is one of the thousands available to library patrons and researchers at the Special Collections Room in the Glendale Central Library.

The Special Collections Room also contains news clippings, books, maps, and other materials that cover the history of Glendale, neighboring cities, and California in general. The collection is particularly useful for local history and genealogy research projects. Special Collections also houses the Cat Collection, one of the largest collections of feline-related materials in the world.

The Special Collections Room is currently open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m and 1 to 3 p.m. and by appointment. Please call (818) 548-2037 for additional information.

This Week in Reading December 20 - 26

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Poet Juan Ramone Jimenez (1956); storywriter, novelist Heinrich Boll (1972)

Novelists and story writers
E.D.E.N. Southworth, Rene Bazin, Albert Payson Terhune, Henry Miller, Giuseppe Lampedusa, Norman Maclean, Alejo Carpentier, Anthony Powell, Hortense Calisher, Calder Willingham, Christopher Buckley, Sandra Cisneros, Donna Tartt, Elizabeth Kordova

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Thomas Gray, George Crabbe, Matthew Arnold, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Jean Toomer, Robert Bly Playwrights and Screenwriters: John Fletcher, John Baptiste Racine, Dion Boucicault, Rod Serling, Nicholas Meyer

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Suzanne K. Langer, Sidney Hook, Rene Girard Believers: Roger Williams, Carlos Castaneda Historians: James Burke Biographers: Quentin Crisp

Humorists, Essayists, Editors and Critics, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Steve Allen, Alan King Essayists: Edward Hoagland, William Kristol Editors and Critics: Robert Ripley, Rebecca West, Deems Taylor, Dana Gioia Journalists: I. F. Stone Officials: Norman Angell Media and Others: Phil Donahue, Jane Fonda, Uri Geller, John Walsh

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Seicho Matsumoto Crime: Peter May Suspense: Mary Higgins Clark

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Edwin Abbott Abbott Science Fiction: Fritz Lieber, Nalo Hopkinson

Visual Artists
Illustrators: Otto Soglow Graphic Novelists: Mark Millar, Tony Moore

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Johnnie Gruelle, Eduard Uspensky, Avi Teens: Robert Muchamore, Stephenie Meyer

Events to read about this week:
“It’s a Wonderful Life”, “The Night Before Christmas”, “The Glass Menagerie”, US Poets Laureate; Winter Solstice, Christmas and Christmas Eve, Kwanzaa; Puccini, Kit Carson, Charles Babbage; Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock, Washington crosses the Delaware, words cross each other, a tsunami wave crosses land, the Red Sox cross their fans.

This Week’s Questions:

Which authors born this week said these?

"If I would have realized that the stories in my head would be as intriguing to others as they were to me, I would probably have started writing sooner. Believe in your own taste."

"There was never a question in my mind. Ever since I could hold a pencil, I wrote poems, skits, plays. We put a velvet curtain up in the garage and the garage was our stage and people sat in the driveway."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
V. S. Pritchett (Literature) - "One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential."

William Safire (Writing) - "... avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives."

Lester Bangs ( Music) - "It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything."

Roger Fry (Art) - " ... the artist's business is not merely the reproduction and literal copying of things seen: -- ... he is expected in some way or other to misrepresent and distort the visual world."

Jean Genet (Drama) - "To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance."

This Week in Reading December 13 - 19

Authors born this week -

Novelists and Story Writers
Jane Austen, Mary Russell Mitford, Italo Svevo, Saki, Ford Madox Ford, Erksine Caldwell, Betty Smith, Laurens Van der Post, Penelope Fitzgerald, Shirley Jackson, John Kennedy Toole, Edna O’Brien

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Heinrich Heine, John Greenleaf Whittier, Paul Eluard, Rafael Alberti, Muriel Rukeyser Playwrights and Screenwriters: Aphra Behn, Carlo Gozzi, Maxwell Anderson, Noel Coward, Abe Burrows, Jean Genet, Kenneth Patchen, Stephen Spielberg

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: George Santayana Believers: Jaroslav Pelikan Scientists: Margaret Meade, Freeman J. Dyson Historians: Carter Woodson, Alison Plowden

Humorists, Essayists, Editors and Critics, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Essayists: William Safire, Frank Deford, Chris Matthews Editors and Critics: Roger Fry, V. S. Pritchett, Alan Bullock, Leonard Maltin, Michelangelo Signorile, Miles Marshall Lewis Journalists: Mary Livermore, Drew Pearson, Ellen Willis, Lesley Stahl, Lester Bangs Officials: George Shultz Media and Others: Jacques Pepin

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Ross MacDonald Crime: Mike McAlary

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Alred Bester, Jack L. Chalker, Michael Moorcock, Tamora Pierce Science Fiction: Arthur C.Clarke, Randall Garrett, Philip K. Dick

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: J. M. DeMatteis

Young People’s Writers
Teens: Jacqueline Wilson

Events to read about this week:
Steroids in baseball, Nostradamus, reaching the South Pole, Bill of Rights, Basketball, Beethoven, Boston Tea Party, “A Christmas Carol”, the Wright Brothers, “The Simpsons”, Paul Klee, NFL, Poor Richard, “The Music Man”

This Week’s Questions:

There are a lot of critics of various kinds this week and some authors wrote criticism. Which ones said these?

"One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential."

"Avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives."

"It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything."

" ... the artist's business is not merely the reproduction and literal copying of things seen: -- ... he is expected in some way or other to misrepresent and distort the visual world."

"To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

Willa Cather was one of a few Americans who most deserved a Nobel Prize in Literature but was not awarded one, although she did win a Pulitzer. One American winner of the Nobel prize, Sinclair Lewis, suggested she, among others, should have received it. Perhaps she lamented not having been given it as one of her later novels, The Professor's House, shows the disillusionment of a winner of a very prestigious literary prize. Cather, who is known more these days for the frequently assigned O Pioneers! and My Antonia, wrote often about unfullfilled desires. Though decidedly reactionary, lamenting the past, and not at all feminist for an ambitious woman on her own, she probably was not able to admit to herself or to others her true feelings about her own nature in that time.

This Week in Reading December 6 - 12, 2009

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist, poet, playwright Bjornstjerne Bjornson (1903); poet Nelly Sachs (1966); novelist Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1970); novelist Naguib Mahfouz (1988)

Novelists and story writers
Gustave Flaubert, Willa Cather, George Grossmith, Joyce Cary, Robert Enriques, Manes Sperber, Rumer Godden, Clarice Lispector, Jim Harrison, Carmen Martin Gaite, Thomas McGuane, Ki Longfellow, John Banville, Mary Gordon

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Horace, John Milton, Nikolai Aleseevich Nekrosov, Emily Dickinson, Pierre Louys, Kahlil Gibran, Joyce Kilmer, Delmore Schwartz, Grace Paley, Carolyn Kizer, Ahmad Shamlou, Thomas Lux Playwrights and Screenwriters: Alfred de Musset, George Feydeau, Odon von Horvath, Dalton Trumbo, Ernest Lehman, Reginald Rose, John Osborne, Peter Handke

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Noam Chomsky Scientists: Robert J. Sternberg Historians: Barry Cunliffe Biographers: Eve Curie

Humorists, Essayists, Editors and Critics, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Joel Chandler Harris, James Thurber, Douglas Kenney Essayists: Osbert Sitwell, Bill Bryson, Norman Finkelstein, Mark Steyn, Ann Coulter Editors and Critics: Paul de Man Officials: John Jay, Tip O’ Neill, Tom Hayden, John Kerry Media and Others: Kirk Douglas, Sammy Davis, Jr., Susan Powter

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: George MacDonald

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Romance: Diana Palmer Historical Fiction: Patrick O'Brian

Visual Artists
Cartoonists: E.C. Segar, Marge, Frank Springer, John Buscema, Ashleigh Brilliant

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Jean de Brunhoff, Sonia Manzano Teens: Jacquelyn Mitchard

Events to read about this week:
Pearl Harbor is attacked, John Lennon is killed, Blago and Bernie are arrested; uber-librarian Melvil Dewey, uber-filmmaker Georges Melies, uber-crooner Frank Sinatra, and uber-muralist Diego Rivera are born; Nobel prizes are given out, Hannukah begins, the Encyclopedia Britannica is published; NAFTA is agreed upon, Human Rights are celebrated by the UN; and Al Gore agrees that George Bush won the election.

This Week’s Questions:

Which author born this week described what you find in the library?

"Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand — a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods — or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values. "

"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

Two satirists share November 30 and two religious fantasy writers share November 29.

"The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it." - Mark Twain

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." - Jonathan Swift

"There's more to life than just the things that can be explained by encyclopedias and facts. Facts alone are not adequate." - Madeline L'Engle

"The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity." - C. S. Lewis.

This Week in Reading Nov. 29 - Dec. 5

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Historian Theodor Mommsen, historian and Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Novelists and story writers
Louisa May Alcott, Samuel Butler, Ellis Parker Butler, Joseph Conrad, Henry Williamson, Hans Helmut Kirst, Rose Wilder Lane, F. Sionil Jose, Joan Didion, John Crowley, Sue Miller, Tehar Ben Jelloum, T. Coraghessen Boyle, Eric L. Harry, Ann Patchett, David Nicholls

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Sir Philip Sidney, Anafasy Fet, Christina Rossetti, Rainier Maria Rilke Playwrights and Screenwriters: Nunnally Johnson, Howard Koch, David Mamet

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Believers: Tom Wright, Benny Hinn Scientists: Anna Freud Historians: Thomas Carlyle, Jacques Barzun Biographers: David Hackett Fisher, Adeline Yen-Mah

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, Garry Shandling Essayists: Nigel Calder, Calvin Trillin, Abbie Hoffman, George Saunders, Editors and Critics: Russell Lynes Journalists: E. J. Kahn Officials: Paul Simon Media and Others: Dick Clark

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Rex Stout Crime: Cornell Woolrich, James Lee Burke

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle

Visual Artists
Photographers: Gordon Parks Graphic Novelists: Joe Quesada, Chris Claremont, Keith Giffen Manga: Cartoonists: Morris

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Lucy Maud Montgomery, Daniel Pennac, Wil Mara Teens: Peter Pohl

Events to read about this week:
Vin Scully, Lucy, Vietnam draft, Napoleon, Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, Dickens' first public reading of A Christmas Carol, Enron, the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, the LA Times, Charlemagne, Walt Disney, prohibition ends, Phi Beta Kappa starts.

This Week’s Questions:
A pair of fascinating pairs share birthdays this week. There are similarities in their two forms of writing and thinking. Who, born this week, gave us these quotes?

"The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it."

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."

"There's more to life than just the things that can be explained by encyclopedias and facts. Facts alone are not adequate."

"The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
Two café society authors who wrote before and after World War II have not been considered serious authors with as much critical acclaim given to others, perhaps because they both were witty satirists about the love relationships of intelligent people. The one you may have heard of, but not read yet, is Nancy Mitford, an English woman who lived in Paris. Her writing was praised as “a-shimmer with wit”, but she was considered, by at least one critic, the author who in our “sadisto-sentimental age has gotten to the sane simplicity of Jane Austen.”

The other one you may not have known either is Dawn Powell, a Mid-Western American who lived in New York City just after the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table. She satirized the poseurs and wannabes. One critic said “that she is closer to this high social comedy than to any accepted brand of American humor--and the English do not insist on having the women in their fiction made attractive. Miss Powell's books are more than merely funny; they are full of psychological insights that are at once sympathetic and cynical."

Read about both, and many more authors from the last hundred years or so, in the Biography Resource Center database available from the Glendale Public Library website Online Resources page. You must have a valid GPL library card barcode number to log in.