This Week in Reading April 5 - 11

Literary names of note this week

Nobel Prize in Literature: Poet Gabriela Mistral (1945)

Novelists and story writers
Sandor Marai, John Fante, Glendon Swarthout, Arthur Hailey, Hugo Claus, Donald Barthelme, Paul Theroux, Barry Levinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Joolz Denby

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Christopher Smart, William Wordsworth, Charles Baudelaire, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Johannes Bobrowski, Mark Strand Playwrights: Clare Boothe Luce

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Philosophers: Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Husserl Historians: David Halberstam

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, and Others
Humorists: Leo Rosten Essayists: William Hazlitt, Booker T. Washington, Montague Summers, Lev Kopelev Journalists: Lincoln Steffens, Lowell Thomas, Walter Winchell, Tony Brown, Vladimir Pozner, Seymour Hersh, David Frost, Ellen Goodman, David Helvarg Officials: Jerry Brown, Christopher Darden Others: Linda Goodman, Hugh Hefner, Robert Kiyosaki, Julia Phillips, Neil Boortz

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Suspense: David Westheimer

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Robert Bloch, Mike Ford Science Fiction: Henry Kuttner, James White, James Patrick Kelly

Visual Artists
Photographers: Eadweard Muybridge

Events to read about, as always.

This Week’s Questions:

There're more journalists than anything this week and LA novelist John Fante is getting his centennial, but April is Poetry Month, after all. Come in to see our display.

(1) Which author born this week said this about a poet born this week when they became friends?

"He is in this sense the most original poet now living,and the one whose writings could the least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere ..."

(2) And what did that poet say about that author when they no longer were friends?

(3) Which poet born this week is credited with “discovering” and making famous the poems of which other poet this week?


Answers to Last Week’s Question:

(1) Maya Angelou said she aspired to be the first, black, American Proust, and was born in Saint Louis. Marge Piercy was born in Detroit and wanted to change the world by bringing people to consciousness. Both wrote poetry and are strong advocates of women's rights and civil rights.

(2) Probably most American-bred readers know from childhood that Washington Irving created the headless horseman who chased mild mannered schoolteacher Ichabod Crane around Sleepy Hollow in the early 1800s. But they don’t likely know about the other one. People whose families come from Russia or other countries know about Mayne Reid’s Headless Horseman , a novel based on a Texas folk tale about "el Muerto", the headless corpse of a defeated soldier placed on a steed set to run to scare the enemy.

The reason for this is, though Reid was one of America’s most prolific pulp fiction storytellers in the nineteenth century between Poe and Twain, his fame did not succeed him in this country, and he was largely forgotten. Very few libraries in America have any of his once cheap books. However, several of his novels were translated into Russian and advertised there as the work of “America’s favorite author.” If he was, it was only for a time.

This Week in Reading March 29 - April 4

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: Poet Octavio Paz (1990)

Novelists and story writers: Antoine Prrevost, Washington Irving, Mayne Reid, Nikolai Gogol, Emile Zola, Edgar Wallace, Ernst Junger, Roberto Arlt, Marcel Ayme, Margarite Duras, John Fowles, Milan Kundera, Tom Sharpe, John Jakes, Judith Rossner, Judith Guest, Marge Piercy.

Poets and Playwrights: George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Edward Everett Hale, Edward Fitizgerald, Paul Verlaine, Maya Angelou / Edmond Rostand, Sean O’Casey, Howard Lindsay, Robert E. Sherwood, Rolf Hochhuth.

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians, Officials: Mose Maimonides, Rene Descartes, Camille Paglia, A.C. Grayling / John Burroughs, Abraham Maslow, Jane Goodall / William Manchester / Al Gore.

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers, and Others: Eric Idle, Amy Sedaris / Ted Morgan, Herb Caen, Kenneth Tynan / Giacomo Casanova, Kittty Kelley / Leo Buscaglia.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Dan Simmons.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Anne McCaffrey, Samuel R. Delaney.


Romance / Historical Fiction Writers: George McDonald Fraser.


Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: Sandra Boynton / Steven T. Seagle.

Children’s / Teen Authors: Hans Christian Andersen, Anna Sewell,, Mark Shulman.

As always, a week of events to read about.

This Week’s Questions: 1) This week many Glendale High School students need to find out about an author for a current assignment. At least two born this week are among the favorites asked about at the Central Library Reference Desk and branches. Here’s a little about both writers.

One intended to “become America’s first black female Proust," the other wanted “to change consciousness … to imagine a better world.”

Both had difficult lives; one was born in Detroit, the other in Saint Louis. They both wrote poetry as well as fiction, and both became spokespersons for civil rights and women’s issues. Who are they?

You can find out much about these two and many other authors or poets in Biography Resource Center and Magill on Literature in Glendale Public Library Online Resources with your library card number. There are biographies, bibliographies, and analyses of their work, with pictures!

2) Two authors born this week both wrote stories about headless horsemen. Who are they?

Answers to Last Week’s Question:

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Poem – Robert Frost – The Death of the Hired Hand

“Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man— Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?” Play – Maxim Gorky – The Lower Depths

“And now the fancy passes by and nothing will remain, and miles around they'll say that I am quite myself again.“ Poem – A. E. Housman – A Shropshire Lad

“Every day a little sting, in the heart and in the head.” Poetic lyrics in a play – Stephen Sondheim – A Little Night Music

“All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.” Play – Tennessee Williams – The Glass Menagerie

“The pennycandystore beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality.” Poem – Lawrence Ferlinghetti – A Coney Island of the Mind

This Week in Reading March 22 - 28

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Roger Martin du Gard (1937), playwright Dario Fo (1997).

Novelists and story writers: Mary Gladys Webb, Heinrich Mann, Nelson Alrgren, Gabrielle Roy, Nicholas Monsaratt, Bud Schulberg, Endo Shusaku, Flannery O’Connor, Erica Jong, Toni Cade Bambara, Patrick Suskind, Mitch Cullin, Lauren Weisberger.

Poets and Playwrights: A. E. Housman, Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Louis Simpson, Gregory Corso, Billy Collins / Maxim Gorky, Josef Capek, Tennessee Williams, Stephen Sondheim, Richard O’Brien, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Martin McDonagh.

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: Karl Mannheim, Wilhelm Reich, Eric Fromm, Victor Frankl, Philip Zimbardo, E. D. Hirsch, Jim Trelease, Daniel Dennett , A. J. P. Taylor, David John Caldwell Irving.

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers, and Others: Fanny Farmer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Joseph Campbell, Gloria Steinem, Bob Woodward, Chris Hansen.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Donald Hamilton, Stephen Hunter, James Patterson.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: William Morris, Thorne Smith, Horace Beam Piper, Rudy Rucker, Kim Stanley Robinson.

Romance / Western / Historical Fiction Writers: Louis L’Amour.

Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: J. C. Leyendecker.

Children’s / Teen Authors: Kate DiCamillo.

And, as usual, a myriad of events to read about.

This Week’s Questions: There’s quite a collection of poets and dramatists this week. Which of the following are lines of poetry and which are lines from a play?

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

“Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man— Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?”

“And now the fancy passes by and nothing will remain, and miles around they'll say that I am quite myself again.“

“Every day a little sting, in the heart and in the head.”

“All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.”

“The penny candy store beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality.”

Answer to Last Week’s Questions: Henrik Ibsen was considered the first modernist playwright who wrote naturalist realism into his problem plays. What do those terms mean?

In this day and age, when we have such terms as Reality TV, (which is, after all, a hyper-romanticized and oft scripted pretense taking its viewers out of their every day reality rather than reminding them of it), it is very easy to become confused about the terms that defined literary and artistic movements in the nineteenth century. Broadly speaking naturalist realism was a step in the movement from divinely centered to human centered views of life, and from escapism to objective depiction of real social and personal issues.

In theatre Henrik Ibsen was one of the first to move beyond the safe well-made play, the generally overblown or staid drama and melodrama of the time. His dramas, (most of which he wrote in Italy instead of his home country, Norway,) caused both controversy and newly liberated interest as they dealt with such things as adultery and sexually transmitted disease. But Ibsen also wrote symbolic and poetic plays.

Though Shakespeare had shown psychological perception in many of his own works three hundred years earlier, the term problem play came to mean those dramas that focused on social and interpersonal conflict rather than philosophical, religious, or comedic experience. Shortly after Ibsen's time writers began to talk of themselves as modern and the modernist movement carried on into the twentieth century where it was met with deconstruction and ultimately postmodernism.

While Ibsen's realism was of his own class,one of this week's playwrights, Maxim Gorky, created political realism focusing on extreme conditions of the lower classes and later German playrwrights made expressionistic plays about realistic political situations. Those were even later turned inside out and called theatre of the absurd. In the mid-twentieth century there were such movements as kitchen sink realism and, in fiction, magic realism. Realism, of course is in the eye of the beholder. It is the artistic depiction of the banal, not the celebration of it as Reality TV seems to do. Realism, yes, say the postmodernists, but always to a different purpose by different authors in different eras. However, as George Bernard Shaw said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

This Week in Reading February 22 - 28

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: John Steinbeck (1962)

Novelists and story writers: Victor Hugo, Frank G. Slaughter, James T. Farrell, Marcel Pagnol, Irwin Shaw, Lawrence Durrell, Anthony Burgess, Peter De Vries, N. Scott Momaday, Dee Brown Sean O’Faolain

Poets and Playwrights: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Stephen Spender, Howard Nemerov, Ishmael Reed, Carlo Goldoni, Ben Hecht, Larry Gelbart

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: Arthur Schoepenhaur, Karl Jaspers, Bendetto Croce, Rudolf Steiner.W. E. B. Du Bois, William L. Shirer, Paul Krugman

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers: Michel de Montaigne, Samuel Pepys

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Elizabeth George, John Sandford, Tim Powers

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Willhelm Grimm, August Derleth, Theodore Sturgeon

Historical Fiction Writers: Bernard Cornwell

Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: Edward Gorey, Milton Caniff

Children’s / Teen Authors: Lemony Snicket

Events to read about: Fascists, Nazis, Communists, Republicans, witches, clones, six shooters, Grand Canyon and Guantanamo Bay, along with the Supreme Court twice, a president, an artist, an architect and two very important printers, Gutenberg, who brought printed books to the Western world, and typographer Daniel Berkeley Updike.

This Week’s Questions: “I quote others only the better to express myself.” “And because I found I had nothing else to write about, I presented myself as a subject.” Was this said by a blogger or one of this week’s authors?

Who are the three authors born this week who gave the following advice to would-be authors?

“Write freely and rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.”

“Keep going. Writing is finally play and there is no reason you should get paid for playing. If you’re a real writer, you’ll write no matter what.”

"It comes down to what I call "suit up and show up." ... A lot of writing is simply showing up and doing the work day after day."

Answer to Last Week’s Question: One of the writers above said “Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one single person – a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.”

Along the same lines, Toni Morrison, who is also the author of last week's quotes, said this: “Whenever I feel uneasy about my writing, I think: What would be the response of the people in the book if they read the book? That’s my way for staying on track. Those are the people for whom I write.”

This Week in Reading February 15 - 21

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: Toni Morrison (1993)

Novelists and Story Writers: Henry Adams, Nikos Kozantzakis, Anais Nin, Carson McCullers, Chaim Potok, Jean Auel, Wallace Stegner, Amy Tan, Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace, Richard Ford, Mo Yan.

Poets and Playwrights: Raymond Queneau, W. H. Auden, Andre Breton, Russell Crouse.

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: Jeremy Bentham, Alfred North Whitehead, John Rawls, Eckhart Tolle, Van Wyck Brooks,

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers: Erma Bombeck.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Sax Rohmer, Ruth Rendell, Margaret Truman, Len Deighton, Gregory McDonald.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Andre Norton, Laurell K. Hamilton, Iain Banks.

Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: Warren Ellis, Gahan Wilson, Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening.

Literary Obituaries: Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih.

Events to read about: Both Corpenicus and Gallileo were born this week; the first magazine in America and later the New Yorker started up in the same week the Post Office was begun to deliver them; the US denied some Japanese Americans the right to citizenship during WWII and a president visited China to re-open it to the West; and we went from a computer the size of a room to You Tube appearing on handhelds.

This Week’s Question: One of this week’s authors said some of the best things ever about the process of writing for people who want to read. Who said the following?

"The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time."

"I wrote my first [x] because I wanted to read it."

"I never wanted to grow up to be a writer. I just wanted to grow up to be an adult."

Answer to Last Week’s Question: We showed you a site with pictures of beautiful libraries from around the world, called Curious Expeditions. We asked you which of these exquisite libraries have you visited. Some of our librarians in the course of their studies and travels have been to several reading rooms shown, including UC, Berkeley, the New York Public Library, our nearby neighbor, the Huntington Library (which has many rare first editions to see,) the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Library of Congress, the British Museum, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Trinity College in Dublin (where you can see the Book of Kells on display.) The list is probably endless because some of us like also to visit other public libraries from small towns to big cities when we’re on vacation. It’s great to have themes for your vacations over your life, from all the libraries you can see to all the theaters you can see or all the ball parks or roller coasters you can visit. We have the books to show you where everything is.