This Week in Reading March 15 - 21

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: Sully Prudhomme (1901) (first recipient), Paul Heyse (1910)

Novelists and story writers: Tobias Smollet, Francisco Ayala, Richard Condon, John Updike, Philip Roth, Irving Wallace, Alice Hoffman.

Poets and Playwrights: Ovid, Stephane Mallarme, Cesar Vallejo, Wilfred Owen, Henrik Ibsen, Lady Gregory, Paul Green

Thinkers, Spiritualists:, Scientists: Edgar Cayce, B. F. Skinner

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers: Sir Richard F. Burton, Richard Ellmann, George Plimpton

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Lawrence Sanders

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: James Morrow, Margaret Weis, William Gibson.

Historical Fiction Writers: Jack Whyte

Illustrators, Cartoonists, Graphic Novelists: Kate Greenaway, Todd McFarlane, Mark Waid

Children’s / Teen Authors: Phyllis McGinley, Luc Besson, Sid Fleischman, Paul Zindel, Mister Rogers, Lois Lowry, MicheleJaffe

Events to read about: It’s mostly about time: the Ides of March, Freedom of Information Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Earth Day, Daylight Savings Time, and the first day of Spring.

This Week’s Question:

Henrik Ibsen wrote many of his major and most influential works while living away from his home country, not so much because he already scandalized their nineteenth century values but because he knew he would. He was considered the first “modernist’ playwright who wrote “naturalist realism’ into his ‘problem plays.’ What do those terms mean?

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

Richard Steele wrote about reading as mental exercise, and how one continues to learn as one ages. Steele and Joseph Addison, created one of the first must read daily magazines in England, The Spectator, in 1711, They intended their daily 2500 word ‘talking points’ "to enliven morality with wit … to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses.” In other words, to be just like many a good blog today. Will today’s better, wittier blogs be studied by literary graduate students three hundred years from now as well? Probably. Social literary motive doesn’t change, the media we use do.

Many question whether he really did get any better at writing with age, but the salacious detective writer was only interested in being a better Mickey Spillane. At the other end of the spectrum, the very literary playwright who felt a responsibility to instruct, and did, was Edward Albee. The brilliant humorist who understood, and was likely in awe of, both of them was Douglas Adams whose Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also had room for Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.. What is literature after all but people talking to others in diverse ways?

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.

This Week in Reading February 8 - 14

We're winding down one of the two times of year that seem to produce the most prolific authors. There are some extremely popular frequently releasing novelists, relentless essayists, a mystery writer who published more than anyone, and fantasy and teen writers who have filled whole shelves by themselves. Also, some very important people to our culture, who also wrote a bit, were born this week.

Literary Names of Note This Week

Literary Obituaries: Playwright Robert Anderson, (1917 - 2009), Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for my Father; playwright Hugh Leonard, (1926 - 2009), Da.

Nobel Prize in Literature: Boris Pasternak (1958)

Novelists and Story Writers: Kate Chopin, Sidney Sheldon, Alice Walker, John Grisham

Poets and Playwrights: Amy Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Bertolt Brecht, Brendan Behan

Thinkers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers: Robert Burton, Charles Darwin, Martin Buber, David Friedman.

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists: Charles Lamb, John Ruskin, Frank Harris, George Meredith.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Georges Simenon, Janwillem van de Wetering.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: Jules Verne.

Children’s / Teen Authors: Jane Yolen, Judy Blume.

Events to read about: Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on February 12, 1809 and are receiving bicentennial celebrations this week. Inventors Thomas Edison and Ray Kurrzweil were born a day apart, just over a century apart. Plus, there’s the Beatles, Bill Clinton, and a few literary dates to note, as well.

This Week’s Question: The writers above, and, of course, the writers from every week of the year, have filled many of the world's most beautiful libraries with their books which take us on many curious expeditions. In fact, we’ve just been sent a link to a wonderful website called, strangely enough, Curious Expeditions, which has an amazing set of photographs of some of the most beautiful libraries in the world to please those who love libraries. How many of these exquisite libraries have you visited? Which ones would you like to visit?

Answer to Last Week’s Question: According to Wikipedia, besides theme parks, museums, and festivals, (some in winter and some in summer,) in England, there are four major Dickens festivals in the United States. San Francisco has the annual Great Dickens Christmas Fair (which often includes a performer from the festival in Kent, England.); Port Jefferson, New York has a Dickens Festival in the Village; Galveston, Texas has Dickens on the Strand; and Riverside, California has the Riverside Dickens Festival which was held last weekend. We don’t know anyone who’s been to any of them but a search of the Internet reveals many smaller and more temporary ones as well.

This Week in Reading January 22 - 31

There are so many Literary Names of Note This Week it would be hard to write about any without ignoring the others. (And while we try to list all Nobel winners in the literary category, there are too many Pulitizer prizewinners to enumerate regularly. Many American novelists and historians written about in these posts have won at least one or have been nominated for that and other well known awards.)

Nobel Prize in Literature: Romain Rolland, (1915), Derek Walcott, (1992). Kenzaburo Oe (1994).

Novelists and story writers: Stendhal, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, W. S. Maugham, Colette, John O’Hara, Norman Mailer, Richard Brautigan, Mordecai Richler, Michael Dorris.

Poets and Playwrights: Lord Byron, Robert Burns, William Congreve, Beaumarchais, August Strindberg, Anton Chekhov, Paddy Chayevsky.

Thinkers, Essayists, Historians: Francis Bacon, Thomas Paine, Barbara Tuchman, Thomas Merton.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Joseph Wambaugh, James Grippando.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: E. T. A. Hoffmann, Philip Jose Farmer, Walter M. Miller, Lloyd Alexander.

Other Genre Writers: Zane Grey (westerns).

Children’s Authors: Lewis Carroll.

And Events to read about – The beginnings of the Library of Congress, birthdays of D. W. Griffith, William Randolph Hearst, Edouard Manet, Jackson Pollock, and others, as always.

This Week’s Question: Two of this week’s authors, and one of last week’s, were known by one name, in both cases a pen name. Sometimes a single name is used by the public out a habit of familiarity or because it's easier than saying the whole name, sometimes one declares it for oneself. What is the rhetorical word used to describe a person known by a single name?

Answer to Last Week’s Question: a) Edgar Allan Poe created a character named C. Auguste Dupin who was not part of law enforcement. In fact, the word ‘detective’ had not yet been coined. Dupin used what Poe called “ractiocination” to deduce what was on criminal minds in stories such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter.” Poe’s character inspired several later fictional detectives such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.; b) The practice of kidnapping and drugging a person to cast votes in various precincts was called ‘cooping.’; c) Though she shares Poe's birthday, and though she was nominated three times, critically acclaimed mystery writer Patricia Highsmith never actually won an Edgar award.

This Week in Reading January 1 - 7

Literary authors born this week:

Initially: E. M. Forster, J. R. R. Tolkien, J. D. Salinger, E. L. Doctorow; also Isaac Asimov, Zora Neale Hurston, and Umberto Eco.

Poets and Playwrights: Carl Sandburg and Christopher Durang.

Nobel prizewinners: Rudolf Eucken (1908) and Gao Xingjian. (2000).

Thinkers, doers, and other well known authors: Cicero, Isaac Newton, Jacob Grimm, Heinrich Schliemann, Kahlil Gibran, Alan Watts, Charles Addams, B. Kliban, James Frazer, Gerald Durrell, Doris Kearns Goodwin

Answer to Last Week’s Question: J. D. Salinger wrote several books and stories with characters from the Glass family, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour among them.

This Week’s Question: When you’re too rushed on the way out of town to research anything, sometimes the opposite of literature happens. Why are all these authors with initials born in the same week? (There is no reasonable answer but we'd love to hear it if you have one. Don't forget B. Kliban, the cartoonist.) See you next week.

This Week in Reading November 23 - 29

It's Thanksgiving week. Many of us are thankful for the end of hot, dry days and the enjoyment of cool evenings where we can sit indoors in a comfortable sweater with a cup of hot chocolate or hot cider next to us while we read.

This week is also a week to catch up on some of the mistakes we've made as we approach the end of the year. While we will edit out all those old Russian calendar mistakes after the year is done, we must correct a glaring one we made two weeks ago. One of the old literary books we relied upon has shown itself wrong on several occasions and we learned that French-Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco was born this week instead. Sorry.

With time off from work, in between family to dos, catch a little bit of classic reading with Louisa May Alcott, Laurence Sterne, C. S. Lewis, or Jin Ba. You can go literary modern with James Agee, Nancy Mitford, Arundhati Roy, or Alberto Moravia. Classic fantasists are on the menu with Madeleine L'Engle, Nelson Slade Bond, L. Sprague de Camp, and science fiction's Frederick Pohl and Poul Anderson. Top it off with the poetry and art of William Blake or the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza.

This Week's Question: One the authors born this week created illuminated books. Who was it? And what are illuminated books?

Answer to Last Week's Question: Mary Ann Evans, the woman who wrote as George Eliot, was a woman in Victorian England when women were considered to be "silly" novel writers. She had planned to publish as Marion Evans. Contemporaneous with her, however, was a famous woman who became the wife of the British Prime Minster, himself a novelist, Benjamin Disraeli, and her name was Mary Anne Evans. Somehow the name George Eliot was decided on for the novel Adam Bede which secured its author a reputation as a great writer. Because an imposter, a man, claimed to be the successful novelist, Mary Ann Evans came out as the real George Eliot and Victorian society accepted her as she published several more great novels, albeit under the male name. Besides this, Evans refused Victorian ideas of piety and in fact lived unmarried, though as married, for over twenty years to a man who could not divorce his wife, who had several children by other men in their open marriage. After he died Evans finally did marry, but to an unstable man twenty years her junior. The last years of her life which will make good screen fodder, her changing impact on the literary world for women, are depicted in the recent novel The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall.

This Week in Reading Sept. 28 - Oct. 4

It is Banned Books Week and the library and publishing worlds take time to remind Americans that the freedom to write, to speak one's mind includes the freedom to read and hear thoughts of other minds. Just ask Nobel prizewinner Elie Wiesel what book banning can lead to. As we are reminded this election season people who would limit access to books in libraries believe they are doing so for good reasons, but public libraries like this one are committed to allowing individuals to decide for oneself, just as, in the American way, we vote.

This week's list of author birthdays gives us a few well known names but not as many as last week. There's the literary line up, Gore Vidal, Graham Greene, Thomas Wolfe, and Truman Capote with noted poets Wallace Stevens and W. S. Merwin. Also reflective of the week is the wisdom of Confucius and the foolish but heartwarming naivete of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote.

Bestselling authors include romance novelist Jackie Collins and thriller author Anne Rice along with humorist Roy Blount, Jr., and fantasist Jack Finney. In our hearts from the last century are those colorful New York voices, Damon Runyon , Groucho Marx, and Brendan Gill.

This Week's Question: Two of the authors on this week's list have been on the American Library Association's list of the 100 Most Challenged Books in the last two decades. One appears under a pseudonym and one whose book was frequently challenged saw the same book on the list of Top Novels of the 20th Century. (And most of those were, of course, challenged, too.) Who are they?

Answer to Last Week's Question: "People need trouble— a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy." William Faulkner, whose works faced frequent banning, would probably agree that people on both sides of book banning controversies need to endure each other's fortitude and frustration. Librarians also heed Faulkner's advice to writers: "Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad. See how they do it." We fill our libraries with books to help the next new writers, thinkers, and voters to do just that.