This Week in Reading August 23 - 29

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Poet, playwright Maurice Maeterlinck (1911)

Novelists and story writers
Theodore Dreiser, Zona Gale, Jules Romains, Jean Rhys, Jorge Luis Borges, C. S. Forester, Christopher Isherwood, Robertson Davies, Julio Cortazar, Brian Moore, Janet Frame, Thea Astley, A. S. Byatt, Howard Jacobson, Paulo Coehlo, Martin Amis, Oscar Hijuelos

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Robert Herrick, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., William Ernest Henley, Guillaume Apollinaire, John Betjeman, Thom Gunn, Charles Wright, Rita Dove Playwrights: Johann Wolfang von Goethe, Edgar Lee Masters, Preston Sturges, Ephraim Kishon, Willy Russell, Charles Busch

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: John Locke, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Believers: Mother Teresa Scientists: Bruno Bettelheim, Roger Tory Peterson, Clifford Geertz, Nathan Pritkin Historians: Arnold Toynbee, Sr., Howard Zinn, Jeremy Schaap Biographers: Chris Offutt

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Bret Harte, Will Cuppy, Mark Russell, Stephen Fry Essayists: Jo Freeman, William Least Heat Moon Editors: Malcolm Cowley Journalists: Ben Bradlee Officials: Lyndon Baines Johnson, John McCain Media and Others: Malvina Reynolds, Robert Greenwald, Rachel Ray, Sam Stern

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Earl Derr Biggers Crime: Suspense: Ira Levin, Frederick Forsyth, Nelson DeMille

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: J.S. Le Fanu Science Fiction: James Tiptree, Jr., Jack Vance, Michael P. Kube-McDowell

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Historical Fiction: Antonia Fraser

Visual Artists
Illustrators: Tasha Tudor Graphic Novelists: Jack Kirby Cartoonists: Max Beerbohm, Walt Kelly

Young People’s Writers
Children: Charles Ghigna, Karen Hesse Teens: Orson Scott Card

Obituary

Novelist, memoirist, journalist Dominick Dunne (83)

Events to read about this week:
Vesuvius erupted and covered the city of Pompeii, the White House was burnt in the District of Columbia, Paris got liberated, and New Orleans was devastated. The Gutenberg Bible and the motion picture camera both changed how information was shared, and two vital social movements, black civil rights and woman’s suffrage changed how human space was shared.

This Week’s Questions:

Speaking of the printing press and the motion picture camera, no less than fifty-two authors born this week had something to do with the medium of film, either as writer of a story, poem, or novel that was made into a movie or television program, or have appeared as themselves in documentary footage - sometimes even as a performer - or were portrayed by others on film or television. A few are outright filmmakers to begin with. You could probably do this every week, but in this special week see if you can match the author with the film.

Authors -

1. Preston Sturges
2. Earl Derr Biggers
3. Willy Russell
4. Frederick Forsyth
5. Christopher Isherwood
6. A. S. Byatt
7. Julio Cortazar
8. James Kirkwood
9. Jean Rhys
10. Paulo Coehlo
11. Jorge Luis Borges
12. Nelson De Mille
13. Janet Frame
14. Jack Kirby
15. J.S. Fanu
16. C.S. Forester
17. Ira Levin
18. Theodore Dreiser
19. Oscar Hijuelos
20. Brian Moore

Films -

A. Torn Curtain
B. The Mambo Kings
C. A Chorus Line
D. An Angel at My Table
E. Iron Man
F. Rosemary's Baby
G. The African Queen
H. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death
I. A Place in the Sun
J. Blow Up
K. Possession
L. Educating Rita
M. Wide Sargasso Sea
N. Veronica Decides to Die
O. Sullivan’s Travels
P. The Day of the Jackal
Q. Charlie Chan movies
R. Cabaret
S. The Gospel According to Mark
T. Word of Honor

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
Candy / Is Dandy / But liquor / Is quicker has often been attributed to Dorothy Parker, because she was that witty, but it was written by Ogden Nash. On the other hand, the poem about everybody attributing every epigram to Oscar Wilde was written by Ms. Parker.

This Week In Reading August 16 - 22

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Poet Salvatore Quasimodo (1959), novelist V. S. Naipaul (2001)

Novelists and story writers
Samuel Richardson, Albert Cohen, Vilhelm Moberg, James Gould-Cozzens, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Vasily Aksyonov, Melvin Van Peebles, E. Annie Proulx, Roger Stone, Greg Bear, Jonathan Coe

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Edgar Guest, Ogden Nash, Charles Bukowksi, Ted Hughes, Li Young Lee Playwrights: James Kirkwood, Jr.

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Believers: Paul Tillich Scientists: Margaret Murie Biographers: T. E. Lawrence, Frank McCourt

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Dorothy Parker, X. J. Kennedy Essayists: Mary Matalin Editors: William Maxwell, Malcolm Forbes Officials: Bill Clinton, Tipper Gore

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Crime: Vincent Bugliosi

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, M. M. Kaye Science Fiction: Hugo Gernsback, Brian Aldiss

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Romance: Jacqueline Susann Historical Fiction: Georgette Heyer

Visual Artists
Illustrators: Aubrey Beardsley, Ivan Bilibin, Chynna Clugston Graphic Novelists: Brian Michael Bendis Cartoonists: Otto Messmer, Stephen Hillenburg

Young People’s Writers
Teens: Dianna Wynne Jones, Will Shetterly

Events to read about this week: The Salem witch trials, Nat Turner's rebellion, the Lincoln – Douglas debates, the women's suffrage amendment, Darwin's theory of evolution, Hawaii's statehood, tjhe death of Elvis, and the births of Sam Goldwyn and Gene Roddenberry.

Obituaries
Columnist Robert Novak (78), news producer Don Hewitt (85)

This Week’s Questions:

Which author born this week wrote which of these?

Candy

Is Dandy

But liquor

Is quicker.

If with the literate I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
Julia Child, born and raised next door in Pasadena, received the National Book Award for Julia Child and More Company in 1980. This was an outgrowth of her later television program called Julia Child and Company. Her first PBS program, The French Chef, based on her first co-written book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was the first national program to be captioned for deaf viewers. Her kitchen from that program is on display at the Smithsonian, in the National Museum of American History. Julia Child's influence on American cuisine after the 1960s is incalculable.

This Week in Reading August 24 - 30

Already back in school or still on vacation? This week's list of authors offers mostly older names you might encounter in liberal arts college studies. For example there are philosophers John Locke and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel you'll have to read and perhaps you'll run into Howard Zinn's take on history. If you study anything about fairy tales and folklore you'll encounter Bruno Bettelheim. Humanities students will read the plays of Johann Wolfgang van Goethe and the poetry of Robert Herrick, the main novels of Jorge Borges and Theodore Dreiser, and maybe in elective courses run across the avant garde poetry of Gullaume Apollinaire and the novels and stories of Jules Romains, Christopher Isherwood, Roberston Davies, Martin Amis, and Paul Coelho.

This Week's Question: Like many a reader casually looking to find something to read on a trip one of this week's authors ran across a three volume set of books in a used bookstore that quite incidentally inspired a character that this author used eleven times for a very successful series of novels. Who was it?

Answer to Last Week's Question: Several authors from last week's list had stories published in the New Yorker. Annie Proulx has had several. But the very first one was by the Algonguin Round Table's Dorothy Parker who was a friend of Harold Ross, the original publisher. The magazine had a hard time starting and the offices were so small that Parker quipped when she was seen elsewhere during the daytime that the reason she was not in the office was that "Someone else is using the pencil."

This Week in Reading August 19 - 25

It's hard to imagine an author born this week who has not, in some way, created works that many of us would consider as delightful. From Rachael Ray's recipes to Jorge Luis Borges' fictions there is much to snack on, so to speak.

If your taste is light verse no one satisfies people like me more than Ogden Nash whose small humanistic tidbits would make perfect blog comments today. Ditto for Dorothy Parker whose tart wit made intelligent woman feel much better about themselves. If your taste runs more to the bitter and ironic, H.P.Lovecraft and that great library supporter Ray Bradbury also hit the spot.

It's also a week to celebrate some strong events, not the least of which is the birth of printing in the West through the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed for a larger audience. Far from mass printing, which took nearly another three hundred years to develop, - Samuel Richardson's epistolary novels were among the first of those - the first books printed often had beautiful engravings which were colored in by artists as prior illuminated manuscripts had been. Along with the development of printing also artistically designed typefaces were developed for the growing market of bourgeois book purchasers.

This Week's Question: What is the name given by book collectors to the very valuable books printed in the infancy of printing during its first fifty or so years, i.e. before 1500?

Answer to Last Week's Question: There were many small computers created from 1950 on, some appearing as kits for engineers to make at home from the pages of such magazines as Radio Electronics, but others such as the Altair in the early seventies and HP's early 9830 helped create the variety of PCs we have today. The Altair used 4K and 12K Basic programs that were written by the team of Paul Allen and Bill Gates. They started a software writing company they called "Micro-Soft" and the rest is not only history, it is the software history is written on.