This Week in Reading January 8 - 14

Born This Week -

Literary Names of Note: Jack London, John Dos Passos, Alan Paton

Thinkers, Essayists, Historians: Edmund Burke, William James, Albert Schweitzer (Nobel Peace prizewinner - 1952), Stephen Hawking

Poets and Playwrights: Robinson Jeffers, Karel Capek, Ferenc Molnar, Brian Friel

Mystery Novelists: Wilkie Collins, Walter Mosley

Fantasy and Science Fiction Novelists: Terry Brooks

Romance Novelists: Alexandra Ripley, Judith Krantz,

Popular Novelists: Horatio Alger, Jr., A. B. Guthrie , Jay McInerney

There are others on the list, as always, with Events, as nearly always, to read about each week.

This Week’s Question: Several authors born this week wrote about the effects of community and the individual upon each other. Which one wrote the following, which might well relate to library blogs as well as to the changes a society undergoes?

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual.
The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

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.

This Week in Reading August 17 -23

This week offers a fairly recent Nobel prizewinner, V. S. Naipaul who won in 2001 while the world was feeling the effects of 9/11. Though he lives in England and calls himself a "Trinidadian" he has written mostly about the country of his ethnic roots, India and of the problems faced by Third Worlders both back home and in the First World. His works are well worth the reading because what he writes is both elegaic and universal. The other Nobel laureate is little known today and shares an unfortunate name with a classic character, the Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo who won the Nobel in 1959.

It is also the week of H. P. Lovecraft, M. M. Kaye, and Ray Bradbury for dark, light, and sociallly speculative fantasy fans. There's Annie Proulx, Alain Robbe-Grillet for sophisticated writing, Nelson DeMille for suspense, Brian Aldiss for science fiction, with Jacqueline Susann for wild romance. We find poets Ted Hughes, Edgar Guest, and Edgar Lee Masters. Humorous light versers abound as well from Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash from the first half of the twentieth century to Mark Russell and X. J. Kennedy in the second. And, as always, many more names and events to fill many more interests.

This Week's Question: At least two authors born this week wrote stories for the New Yorker. Who were they? Who wrote the very first 7,000 word story for that magazine?

Answer to Last Week's Question: The person known as "The Poet Laureate of Skid Row" was Los Angeles' own Charles Bukowski who has achieved cult-like status among aficionados and was immortalized in the movie, Barfly. He lived what he wrote and said once, "The difference between Art and Life is that Art is more bearable."

This Week in Reading August 10 - 16

Here come the August doldrums. There’s a little literary action this week, especially near the end and mostly older writers. There are two Nobel Prizewinners again but who today has heard of the 1922 winner, Spanish playwright Jacinto Benavente, or seen one of his plays? Well, then, how about a play or saga about social issues from England’s prolific John Galsworthy, the 1932 recipient? Speaking of sagas, the American Edna Ferber was extremely well read in the 1920s and 1930s and her works were made into very popular plays, muscials, and movies.

Two other names from memory come up this week. Yes, we all know of Sir Walter Scott but how many have actually slogged through Ivanhoe rather than remembering it from the movies? (Or was it the movie that was dull and the book lively?) And is T. E. Lawrence known more for his adventures portrayed in the movie Lawrence of Arabia than for his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom? (By the way, the screenplay of that film was by a renowned playwright born this week, Robert Bolt.)

Lots of people have read Danielle Steel , also incredibly prolific, and Georgette Heyer however. Steel is likely the most read name in contemporary romance but there are many, many challengers. Heyer, back in the first half of the twentieth century, essentially invented the genre of historical romance, particularly Regency romances by writing “in the style of” Jane Austen and explaining that period of English history to her readers. Heyer also wrote very popular historical mysteries, too. From the same era, millions were thrilled by the romantic, gothic mysteries of Mary Roberts Rinehart.

This Week’s Question: What poet born in this week was known as the “Poet Laureate of Skid Row?”

Answer to last week’s question: From now on the Glendale Central Library is open from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM Monday through Thursday, and will still be open from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Friday and Saturday, as well on 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM on all Sundays except those on holiday weekends.