This Week in Reading February 17 - 23

February gives us more super sellers this week. There are the mystery writers Margaret Truman and Ruth Rendell along with suspense specialist Len Deighton and humorist Erma Bombeck, all of whom were very popular in years past and still today. While not being a prolific writer, the unique timeframes of Jean Auel's books set in prehistoric times have always been in high demand.

Then there are the literary greats who also have had respectable sales beyond popular interest, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, Nikos Kazantzakis, and Wallace Stegner. As last week saw two cartoonists this week is shared by the two gothically funny illustrators, Edward Gorey and Gahan Wilson.

This week's question: There are several well known poets born in this week. W. H. Auden, James Russell Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Nobel prizewinner, the Greek poet, George Seferis.

Which of them wrote the following? "No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him."

Which of the poets wrote this? "No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted."

Answer to last week's question: The creator of Maus, Art Spiegelman, was not the first graphic novelist in America, but he was the one who brought the underground comic culture to the attention of mainstream America. His 1986 tale, drawn in cartoons, of his parents' experiences surviving the Holocaust actually won him the Pulitzer Prize. Matt Groening's Simpsons franchise has won him nine Emmys and his series Futurama has won him one.

This Week in Reading February 3 - 9

As indicated before it's bestselling authors on parade this week. Within this span of a few days in February we have the birth dates of popular and prolific authors Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Sinclair Lewis, James Michener, John Grisham, Alice Walker and Andrew Greeley all of whom who have sold books in the millions to readers and to public libraries like this one.

Besides those very popular fiction writers there are also literary names well known to more serious readers, such as playwrights Christopher Marlowe, Brendan Behan, poet Amy Lowell, and countercultural heroes Gertrude Stein and William S. Burroughs, most of whom have sold millions of copies to college libraries and their students after their deaths.

This Week's Question: Christopher Marlowe, perhaps born this week, (no one really knows,) was killed at the age of twenty-nine in May of 1593, according to official transcripts, possibly as a result of his underworld spying activities. Before that time he had written the plays Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine (parts 1 and 2), The Jew of Malta, Edward II, and his first, at the age of twenty-three, a collaboration called Dido, Queen of Carthage. Because of his poetical and dramatic skills there is little doubt in many literary historians' views that had he lived he would have been not just a contemporary but an equal to William Shakespeare. However, there has been ongoing controversy among only a very few that he, among other candidates, was, in fact, the man who wrote the plays attributed to a front man known as 'Shakespeare'. While recognizing that no one has ever proved, nor likely can, that Marlowe, nor any of the others, was Shakespeare, a few base facts are nonetheless tantalizing. Marlowe was born in 1564. When was Shakespeare born? And at what age did Shakespeare begin his playwriting career?

Answer to Last Week's Question: The Library of Congress was begun anew after its 1814 burning by the acquistion of 6,487 books from the personal collection of Thomas Jefferson.

Sidney Sheldon - 1917-2007

Best selling author and screenwriter Sidney Sheldon died Tuesday.

Besides novels like Rage of Angels, Windmills of the Gods, and The Other Side of Midnight, Sheldon also created movie and television hits like The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and I Dream of Jeannie.

“For his part, Sheldon said: ‘I don't write for critics. I write for readers.’” LA Times 1/30/2007 Click here for the full article.