This Week in Reading December 13 - 19

Authors born this week -

Novelists and Story Writers
Jane Austen, Mary Russell Mitford, Italo Svevo, Saki, Ford Madox Ford, Erksine Caldwell, Betty Smith, Laurens Van der Post, Penelope Fitzgerald, Shirley Jackson, John Kennedy Toole, Edna O’Brien

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Heinrich Heine, John Greenleaf Whittier, Paul Eluard, Rafael Alberti, Muriel Rukeyser Playwrights and Screenwriters: Aphra Behn, Carlo Gozzi, Maxwell Anderson, Noel Coward, Abe Burrows, Jean Genet, Kenneth Patchen, Stephen Spielberg

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: George Santayana Believers: Jaroslav Pelikan Scientists: Margaret Meade, Freeman J. Dyson Historians: Carter Woodson, Alison Plowden

Humorists, Essayists, Editors and Critics, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Essayists: William Safire, Frank Deford, Chris Matthews Editors and Critics: Roger Fry, V. S. Pritchett, Alan Bullock, Leonard Maltin, Michelangelo Signorile, Miles Marshall Lewis Journalists: Mary Livermore, Drew Pearson, Ellen Willis, Lesley Stahl, Lester Bangs Officials: George Shultz Media and Others: Jacques Pepin

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Ross MacDonald Crime: Mike McAlary

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Alred Bester, Jack L. Chalker, Michael Moorcock, Tamora Pierce Science Fiction: Arthur C.Clarke, Randall Garrett, Philip K. Dick

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: J. M. DeMatteis

Young People’s Writers
Teens: Jacqueline Wilson

Events to read about this week:
Steroids in baseball, Nostradamus, reaching the South Pole, Bill of Rights, Basketball, Beethoven, Boston Tea Party, “A Christmas Carol”, the Wright Brothers, “The Simpsons”, Paul Klee, NFL, Poor Richard, “The Music Man”

This Week’s Questions:

There are a lot of critics of various kinds this week and some authors wrote criticism. Which ones said these?

"One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential."

"Avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives."

"It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything."

" ... the artist's business is not merely the reproduction and literal copying of things seen: -- ... he is expected in some way or other to misrepresent and distort the visual world."

"To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

Willa Cather was one of a few Americans who most deserved a Nobel Prize in Literature but was not awarded one, although she did win a Pulitzer. One American winner of the Nobel prize, Sinclair Lewis, suggested she, among others, should have received it. Perhaps she lamented not having been given it as one of her later novels, The Professor's House, shows the disillusionment of a winner of a very prestigious literary prize. Cather, who is known more these days for the frequently assigned O Pioneers! and My Antonia, wrote often about unfullfilled desires. Though decidedly reactionary, lamenting the past, and not at all feminist for an ambitious woman on her own, she probably was not able to admit to herself or to others her true feelings about her own nature in that time.

This Week in Reading May 31 - June 6

Authors born this week:

Nobel Prize in Literature:
Poet, novelist Karl Adolf Gellerup (1917), Novelist Thomas Mann (1929), Poet Saint-John Perse (1960)

Novelists and story writers:
Thomas Hardy, Dorothy West, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Jolley, Maurice Shadbolt, Christy Brown, Carol Shields, Margaret Drabble, Charles Dickinson, Jim Knipfel

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Alexander Pushkin, Walt Whitman, John Masefield, Allen Ginsberg Playwrights: Pierre Corneille, Federico Garcia Lorca, John Van Druten, Spalding Gray, Harvey Fierstein

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers

Believers: Norman Vincent Peale, William Sloane Coffin, Robert Fulghum Scientists: Ruth Westheimer Historians: Cornelius Ryan, James H. Billington Biographers: Marquis de Sade

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others

Humorists: Fred Allen, Sandra Bernhard, John Hodgman Essayists: Adam Smith, Bernard Goldberg, Frank Rich Lawrence Lessig Journalists: Bill Moyers, Alexander Cockburn, Ahron Bregman, John Hockenberry, Anderson Cooper, target="_blank"Chuck Klosterman Media and others: Kevin Brownlow, Matthew Lesko, Suze Orman

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers

Fantasy: V. C. Andrews, Norton Juster, Marion Zimmer Bradley

Historical Fiction / Romance / Western Writers

Historical Fiction: Colleen McCullough, Ken Follett Historical Romance Fiction: Kathleen E. Woodiwiss Westerns: Larry McMurty

Visual Artists

Graphic Novelists: Adrian Tomine

Young People’s Writers

Children’s: Richard Scarry, Paul Stewart, Cynthia Rylant Teens: Margo Lanagan, Sarah Dessen

Events to read about from the Salem witch trials to D-Day.

This Week’s Questions:

Which novelist born this week wrote a book about another novelist born this week, is the sibling of another famous novelist, and married a prominent biographer?

There are three disabled writers this week, two of whom used wheelchairs most of their adult lives, but one who was otherwise mobilized. Who are they?

Which author born this week wrote only one fifth of the novels published under that author's name? (Be careful, it seems to have happened to another of this week's authors, but not to that extent so far.)

Which author is said to have worked as a librarian?

Answers to Last Week’s Questions:

Ralph Waldo Emerson said these:

"Tis the good reader that makes the good book."

"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."

"Never read a book that is not a year old."

But G. K. Chesterton said these:

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

"A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying 'Of course, I do not like green cheese; I am very fond of brown sherry.'"

Any question now about who could have been added also to the humorist category last week?

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

This Week in Reading March 22 - 28

Literary Names of Note This Week

Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Roger Martin du Gard (1937), playwright Dario Fo (1997).

Novelists and story writers: Mary Gladys Webb, Heinrich Mann, Nelson Alrgren, Gabrielle Roy, Nicholas Monsaratt, Bud Schulberg, Endo Shusaku, Flannery O’Connor, Erica Jong, Toni Cade Bambara, Patrick Suskind, Mitch Cullin, Lauren Weisberger.

Poets and Playwrights: A. E. Housman, Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Louis Simpson, Gregory Corso, Billy Collins / Maxim Gorky, Josef Capek, Tennessee Williams, Stephen Sondheim, Richard O’Brien, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Martin McDonagh.

Thinkers, Spiritualists, Scientists, Historians: Karl Mannheim, Wilhelm Reich, Eric Fromm, Victor Frankl, Philip Zimbardo, E. D. Hirsch, Jim Trelease, Daniel Dennett , A. J. P. Taylor, David John Caldwell Irving.

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Biographers, and Others: Fanny Farmer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Joseph Campbell, Gloria Steinem, Bob Woodward, Chris Hansen.

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers: Donald Hamilton, Stephen Hunter, James Patterson.

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers: William Morris, Thorne Smith, Horace Beam Piper, Rudy Rucker, Kim Stanley Robinson.

Romance / Western / Historical Fiction Writers: Louis L’Amour.

Graphic Novelists / Cartoonists / Illustrators: J. C. Leyendecker.

Children’s / Teen Authors: Kate DiCamillo.

And, as usual, a myriad of events to read about.

This Week’s Questions: There’s quite a collection of poets and dramatists this week. Which of the following are lines of poetry and which are lines from a play?

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

“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?”

“And now the fancy passes by and nothing will remain, and miles around they'll say that I am quite myself again.“

“Every day a little sting, in the heart and in the head.”

“All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.”

“The penny candy store beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality.”

Answer to Last Week’s Questions: Henrik Ibsen was considered the first modernist playwright who wrote naturalist realism into his problem plays. What do those terms mean?

In this day and age, when we have such terms as Reality TV, (which is, after all, a hyper-romanticized and oft scripted pretense taking its viewers out of their every day reality rather than reminding them of it), it is very easy to become confused about the terms that defined literary and artistic movements in the nineteenth century. Broadly speaking naturalist realism was a step in the movement from divinely centered to human centered views of life, and from escapism to objective depiction of real social and personal issues.

In theatre Henrik Ibsen was one of the first to move beyond the safe well-made play, the generally overblown or staid drama and melodrama of the time. His dramas, (most of which he wrote in Italy instead of his home country, Norway,) caused both controversy and newly liberated interest as they dealt with such things as adultery and sexually transmitted disease. But Ibsen also wrote symbolic and poetic plays.

Though Shakespeare had shown psychological perception in many of his own works three hundred years earlier, the term problem play came to mean those dramas that focused on social and interpersonal conflict rather than philosophical, religious, or comedic experience. Shortly after Ibsen's time writers began to talk of themselves as modern and the modernist movement carried on into the twentieth century where it was met with deconstruction and ultimately postmodernism.

While Ibsen's realism was of his own class,one of this week's playwrights, Maxim Gorky, created political realism focusing on extreme conditions of the lower classes and later German playrwrights made expressionistic plays about realistic political situations. Those were even later turned inside out and called theatre of the absurd. In the mid-twentieth century there were such movements as kitchen sink realism and, in fiction, magic realism. Realism, of course is in the eye of the beholder. It is the artistic depiction of the banal, not the celebration of it as Reality TV seems to do. Realism, yes, say the postmodernists, but always to a different purpose by different authors in different eras. However, as George Bernard Shaw said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

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?