This Week in Reading April 26 - May 2

Authors born this week:

Nobel Prize Winners
Poet Vicente Aleixandre (1977)

Novelists and Story Writers

Jose de Alencar, Rafael Sabatini, Jaroslav Hasek, Antal Szerb, Morris West, Harper Lee, Joseph Heller, Bernard Malamud, Terry Southern, Annie Dillard, John Boyne

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Roberto Bolano, Rod McKuen Playwrights: Jerome K. Jerome, Clyde Fitch, Anita Loos, August Wilson

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: David Hume, Herbert Spencer, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ludwig Wittgenstein Scientists: Benjamin Spock Historians: Edward Gibbon, Aviva Chomsky

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, and Others
Humorists: John Arbuthnot Essayists: Joseph Addison, Mary Wollstonecraft, Coretta Scott King Journalists: Karl Kraus, Hedda Hopper, Maury Allen, Rowland Evans Officials: Marcus Aurelius Media and others: Alice B. Toklas, Lorenz Hart, Jack Paar, Alice Waters, Jay Leno, Larry Elder, Jerry Seinfeld

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Jill Paton Walsh, Ian Rankin Suspense: Alistair MacLean

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Terry Pratchett, Joel Rosenburg Science Fiction: E. E. Smith, Jack Williamson, A. E. van Vogt, Larry Niven, Robert J. Sawyer

Visual Artists
Illustrators: John James Audubon

Young People’s Writers
Teen Authors: Lois Duncan


Events to read about, as always.

This Week’s Questions:

Science fiction is strongly represented this week. In fact, there is someone known as the "Dean of Science Fiction." There is also the "Father of Space Operas." Another created some "Laws of Science Fiction." More than one credit libraries for inspiring their imaginations. Who are they?

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

Most Shakespeare companies and festivals perform on stages named after donors or founders. Two were named the Globe, such as the Old Globe in San Diego and the newly built London replica called Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the site of the original. Although there may be smaller ones somewhere, the only prominent performance stage named the Royal Shakespeare Theatre are the ones used by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England. It is currently closed for reconstruction until next year and performances are in the Courtyard Theatre and at other stages in London and Newcastle.

Classic mystery novelist Ngaio Marsh, known as one of the four "Queens of Crime" of the Golden Age of English detective novels, wrote over thirty mysteries set around the stage in the first half of the twentieth century. Marsh was a theatrical director herself in New Zealand. The University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, named the Ngaio Marsh Theatre to honor her endeavors there. Marsh's novels were set in England, primarily in London's West End. Marsh's genttlemanly detective, Roderick Alleyn, was not an actor (like Simon Brett's amateur detective Charles Paris) but he loved theatre and the actresses he met there.

This Week in Reading April 19 - 25

This Week in Reading

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced Monday, April 20 with many awards for journalism and one for music. Here are the literary awards this year:

Fiction - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Drama - Ruined (to be published) by Lynn Nottage

History - The Hemingses of Monticello: an American family by Annette Gordon-Reed

Biography - American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

Poetry - The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin

General Nonfiction - Slavery by Another Name: the re-enslavement of black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon

Obituaries

Science Fiction novelist, story writer J. G. Ballard (1930 – 2009), was a strong influence on cyberpunk and music with particularly dystopian themes.

Authors Born This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature
Playwright Jose Echegaray (1904), Poet Carl Spitteler (1919), Novelist Halidor Laxness (1955)

Novelists and story writers Henry Fielding, Madame de Stael, Charlotte Bronte, Anthony Trollope, Ellen Glasgow, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Jan de Hartog, Ross Lockridge, Maurice Druon, J. P. Donleavey, Steve Erickson, Sebastian Faulks

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Ted Kooser, Louise Gluck, James Fenton Playwrights William Shakespeare, Elaine May, Jason Miller, Eric Bogosian

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Immanuel Kant, Max Weber Believers: Shirley MacLaine, James Dobson Scientists: John Muir, Otto Rank, J. Robert Oppenheimer Biographers::Patricia Bosworth

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, and Others
Humorists: Artemus Ward Essayists: Helen Prejean, Phillip Longman, Dinesh D’Souza Editors Fiona Kelleghan Journalists: Edward R. Murrow, Andrew Tobias Others: Aaron Spellling, John Waters, Michael Moore

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery Ngaio Marsh, John Mortimer, Sue Grafton

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Peter S. Beagle, Avram Davidson Science Fiction: Steven Silver

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Dinah Maria Mulock Craik


Events to Read About

It’s all about preservation this week. The Library of Congress exists to preserve the written word, and the Mosaic browser helped us preserve words and graphics on the Internet. We also need to preserve our memories of what did happen to a past generation in Armenia and we need to preserve the earth for future generations.

This Week’s Questions

There are old and new Globe Theatres, and there are many Shakespeare companies, of course, and Shakespeare Festivals, but can you name one theater named after William Shakespeare?

Who else born this week, has had a theatre named after them?

Answers to Last Week’s Questions

Anatole France was born in France and lived there all his life. There is no record in the biographies of these authors (in Biography Resource Center) of Samuel Beckett changing his Irish citizenship for French though he lived in France for the rest of his life after moving there for World War Two. J. M. G. le Clezio was born in France to parents who were still citizens of Mauritius and thus had two citizenships, French and Mauritian, though he called himself a Frenchman.

Beckett was born in the Republic of Ireland, and Seamus Heaney was born in the country of Northern Ireland, the two countries that now co-exist more or less peacefully on the Emerald Isle we call Ireland.

Beckett taught in French at the University of Dublin before moving to France for the remainder of his life; le Clezio has taught in the French language in several countries, including recent posts in the United States.

Heaney has not published novels (and we apologize profusely for having said so incorrectly on our this week list). Le Clezio does not yet write plays, nor poetry, but he has written books for children which may have elements of both. Beckett and France wrote all three. All four Nobel prizewinners wrote essays and nonfiction books as well.

The Index Liborum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books), was a list of books condemned by the Catholic Church. It existed in various forms from the sixteenth century until it was abolished by Pope Paul Vi in 1966. Its last edition was published in 1948 and included at least two works by Anatole France after he had won the Nobel Prize.