This Week in Reading June 14 - 20

Authors born this week:

Nobel Prize in Literature
Storywriter, playwright, novelist Yasunari Kawabata (1968)

Novelists and story writers
Harriett Beecher Stowe, Ivan Goncharov, Charles W. Chestnutt, Laura Z. Hobson, John Hersey, Jerzy Kosinski, Erich Segal, Joyce Carol Oates, Laurie Colwin, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Christian Bauman

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Sam Walter Foss, Frithjof Schuon, Geoffrey Hill, Paul Muldoon Playwrights: Marco Praga, Lillian Hellman

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Blaise Pascal, Jurgen Habermas Scientists Erik Erikson Biographers: Xaviera Hollander

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Essayists: Sylvia Porter, Leon Wieseltier, George Akerlof, Russell Ash Editors and Worders: John Robert Gregg, Katherine Graham, Peter Gilliver Journalists: John Howard Griffin, Pierre Salinger Officials: Mario Cuomo, Newt Gringrich Media and others: Pauline Kael, Delia Smith, Roger Ebert, Donald Trump, Linda Chavez, Diablo Cody

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Suspense: Rosamond Smith

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Harry Turtledove Science Fiction: Murray Leinster

Visual Artists
Illustrators: James Montgomery Flagg, Nicholas Bentley, Chris Van Allsburg Graphic Novelists: Chris Onstad Cartoonists: Saul Steinberg Photographers: Carl Van Vechten, Margaret Bourke-White

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: W. V. Awdry, Laurence Yep, Chris Van Allsburg Teens: Brian Jacques

Events to read about this week:
Flag Day in America, Drake’s discovery of California and the short lived Bear Flag Republic in California, Babbage’s “Difference Engine,” the first Superman comic, the end of the Vatican’s ban on books, the signing of the Magna Carta, Ben Franklin proves electricity with a kite, birth dates of Geronimo, artist M. C. Escher,and designer Charles Eames, the Watergate break-in, O J’s slow chase, the invention of the chocolate chip cookie, Joan of Arc, the end of slavery in the Union, and hiding that fact from slaves in Texas, and the beginning of the Victorian Age.

This Week’s Questions:

There is an abundance of visual storytellers this week, artists who also wrote, writers who also drew, writers who wrote pictorially, writers who wrote about pictures, and writers who wrote pictures, too, one of whom won an Academy Award for it. Of whom are the following written?

"Every picture in this book has a story to tell that is worth the telling."

"There are many exquisitely visual passages ..." [The author] "presents these elements with a poetic style sometimes described as a series of linked haiku."

"The artist eyes of the author were quick to note gorgeous cloud effects and other scenic beauty, and his pen preserves the impressions and passes them on to the reader."

The "work of a master; stunning, luminescent and conveying a sense of the mystical and magical."

A "writer of pictures, an architect of speech and sounds, a draftsman of philosophical reflections."

One movie critic was a "yearly presence at the noted Cannes Film Festival in France ... published an account of the event ... which [the critic] also illustrated" [and] "ventured into fiction in 1993 with ... a murder mystery serial spoofing Hollywood."

The other one "would not just describe or critique a film but confront it—as if ... bringing to bear everything [the critic] knew about movie history and all [the critic's] intelligence and critical and literary talent."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
"I am very foolish over my own book. I have a copy which I constantly read and find very illuminating." - William Butler Yeats

"There certainly does seem to be the possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks." - Dorothy L. Sayers

"You write a book, you invest your imagination in it, and then you hand it over to a bunch of people who have no imagination and no understanding of their own enterprise." - Saul Bellow

"There's only one person a writer should pay any attention to. It's not any damn critic. It's the reader." - William Stryon

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