This Week in Reading November 22 - 28

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist Andre Gide (1947)

Novelists and story writers
Laurence Sterne, George Eliot, Carlo Collodi, Eca de Queiros, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Helen Hooven Santmyer, Dawn Powell, Nancy Mitford, Jin Ba, Alberto Moravio, James Agee, Randolph Stow, Marilynne Robinson, Alexis Wright, Arturo Perez, Ahmadou Koroouma, Arundhati Roy

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: William Cowper, William Blake, Alexandr Blok, Paul Celan Playwrights: Felix Lope de Vega, Stefan Zweig, Guy Bolton. Eugene Ionesco, Garson Kanin

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Baruch Spinoza, Friedrich Engels, Claude Levi Strauss Believers: John Bunyan, Hal Lindsey Scientists: Norbert Weiner, Lewis Thomas, Keith Ablow Historians: Charles A. Beard, Jennifer Michael Hecht Biographers: John Bigelow, Ishmael Beah

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Terry Gilliam, Bruce Vilanch, Jon Stewart Essayists: Dale Carnegie, William F. Buckley, Jr., Guy Davenport, Gail Sheehy, Harry Edwards, Dervla Murphy, Thomas B. Kohnstamm Editors and Critics: Thomas Cook, Ward Morehouse Journalists: Gail Collins, Caroline Kennedy Officials: Gary Hart, Chuck Schumer Media and Others: Harpo Marx, Ben Stein, Dick Morris, Sam Seder

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Robert Barnard, Valerie Wilson Wesley

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: L. Sprague De Camp, Victor Pelevin, Steven Brust Science Fiction: Nelson Slade Bond, Forrest J. Ackerman, Frederick Pohl, Poul Anderson, Spider Robinson

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Historical Fiction: Nigel Tranter

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Roy Thomas, Marjane Satrapi, John Kovalic Cartoonists: Charles Schulz, Roz Chast

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: P. D. Eastman, Tom Ungerer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Henkes, Jenna Bush

Events to read about this week:
Happy Thanksgiving, thanks to Andrew Carnegie for all the library buildings, but President Kennedy and Harvey Milk were assassinated; while Life magazine, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Motown's Berry Gordon all started life.

This Week’s Questions:

Which author born this week said this?: "Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out."

Of which other one was the following said?: " ... difficult art at its best is so fine, so beautifully a-shimmer with wit and nonsense and gaity, that it creates a standard of its own."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

Humorist, columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, who is responsible for the librarian - like quote among dozens of others, and comic playwright George S. Kaufmann were both founding members of the Algonguin Round Table of wits in New York in the 1920s and 1930s. Comic actor Harpo Marx, born this week, became a member as well though he never published anything, nor let the general public hear what he had to say, until he published his autobiography, Harpo Speaks. It is one of the most enjoyable bios ever, showing that he belonged there among the literary wits.

This Week in Reading November 15 - 21

The National Book Awards for 2009 were announced this week, including the most loved National Book Award book in sixty years of fiction as voted by today's public.

Fiction - Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

Poetry - Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: a trilogy

Nonfiction - T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: the epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Young People's Literature - Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: twice toward justice

The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction - Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

Distinguished Contribution to American Letters - Gore Vidal

Literarian Award - Dave Eggers

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist Selma Lagerlof (1909); poet, novelist, playwright Gerhart Hauptmann (1912); novelist, poet, story writer Nadine Gordimer (1991); poet, novelist Jose Saramago (1998)

Novelists and story writers
Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes, Joan Lindsay, Klaus Mann, Marilyn French, J.G. Ballard, Chinua Achebe, Vassilies Vassilikos, Rodney Hall, Auberon Waugh, Don de Lillo, Margaret Atwood

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Marianne Moore, Allen Tate, Nazim Hikmet, Dalie Ravikovitch, Victoria Tokareva, Sharon Olds Playwrights: William S. Gilbert, George S. Kaufman

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Voltaire, Jacques Maritain, Robert Nozick Scientists: Lev Vygotsky, Benoit Mandelbrot Historians: Shelby Foote Biographers: Danny Wallace

Humorists, Essayists, Editors and Critics, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Clarence Day, Franklin Pierce Adams, Peter Cook Essayists: Wyndham Lewis, Peter Drucker, Tahir Shah Editors and Critics: Arthur Quiller-Couch, Sacheverell Sitwell, Christopher Tolkien Journalists: Rita Cosby, Christopher Noxon Officials: Norman Thomas, Robert F. Kennedy, Joe Biden, Howard Dean Media and Others: Lee Strasberg, George Gallup, Alistair Cooke, Larry King, Jack Welch, Dick Cavett, Ted Turner, Marlo Thomas, Rupaul, Rocco DiSpiritu

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Suspense: Richard Marcinko

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Christopher Paolini Horror: Science Fiction: Alan Dean Foster

Adventure / Westerns
Westerns: Jack Schaeffer

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Alan Moore, Jill Thompson Manga: Cartoonists: Chester Gould

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Elizabeth George Speare Teens: Robin McKinley

Events to read about this week:
The Articles of Confederation, Sherman’s March to the Sea, painters Rene Magritte and Georgia O’Keeffe, the Warsaw Ghetto, the Elizabethan Age, the first Congress, the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore in Paris, Twain's jumping frog contest, Mickey Mouse, The Gettysburg Address, The impeachment of Bill Clinoton, Dia de los Revolucion, The man the Hubble telescope was named for, the Nuremburg Trials, Longfellow’s first pubication, Edison’s phonograph, and Einstein's famous formula.

This Week’s Questions:
How many of this week's authors were members of the Algonguin Round Table in New York? Which one of them said what most librarians can say? "I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
"Either you or I, but both together is out of the question!" While it’s perfectly understandable you may have thought that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it in his novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it was Fyodor Dostoyevsky whose short novel, The Double, depicted the case of a government clerk who is driven mad by confronting a sudden doppelganger of himself. In his mind, the double steals his identity and ruins his good name by acting badly in society as if he was the original.

While the Russians of the nineteenth century were not specifically Victorians there was certainly a strain in that century’s literature, from Gogol through Chekhov, coincident with the burgeoning field of psychology, of beginning to deal with the complex dualities of human nature. Europe caught on as well, and American writers began to explore these threads of psychological understanding tentatively in the last century. Dualities are now bursting forth in speculative and fantasy fiction and visual entertainment reflecting the psychological impact of America's social and political tensions.

This Week in Reading November 8 - 14, 2009

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist Imre Kertesz

Novelists and story writers
Oliver Goldsmith, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Winston Churchill, Arnold Zweig, Margaret Mitchell, John Moore, Eric Malpass, Howard Fast, Kurt Vonnegut, Carlos Fuentes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mary Gaitskill, Katherine Weber

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Frederic Schiller, Jose Hernandez, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Vachel Lindsay, Anne Sexton Playwrights: Martha Gellhorn, Ronald Harwood, Garry Marshall, Wallace Shawn

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Believers: Martin Luther, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Scientists: Carl Sagan, Amory Lovins, Michael Fitzgerald Historians: Frederick Jackson Turner, C. Vann Woodward, Alistair Horne, Biographers: David Bret

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Marc Favreau, P. J. O’Rourke Essayists: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Naomi Wolf, Ayaan Hirsi, Ali Editors and Critics: Roland Barthes Journalists: Dorothy Day, Harrison Salisbury, Morley Safer, Peter Arnett, Tracy Kidder Officials: Louis Brandeis, Barbara Boxer Media and Others: Whoopi Goldberg, Gordon Ramsay

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: John P. Marquand

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Michael Ende, Neil Gaiman Science Fiction: Stephen Baxter

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Historical Fiction: F. van Wyck Mason

Visual Artists
Illustrators: William Hogarth Graphic Novelists: Rivkah Cartoonists: Bill Mantlo Manga: Mashashi Kishimoto

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Jacob Abbott, Astrid Lindgren, William Steig Teens: Neal Shusterman

Events to read about this week:
The Bodelian Library, the Marine Corps, Teddy Bears, and Sesame Street get started; the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and Moby Dick get published; Germany undergoes the Nazi Kristalnacht and the Berlin Wall falling down; the Mayflower Compact is made and Veterans are honored; Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, and George Patton are born; Tim Berners-Lee explains the World Wide Web.

This Week’s Questions:

This week gives us some major authors of classic gothic fiction. Today's sexually tinged vampires are currently the entertainment and publishing world's big thing. They are obviously drawn from Bram Stoker's classic Dracula, but Stoker himself was actually almost prudish and he would be surprised at what psychological traits could be seen to be lying underneath his character's surfaces.

In that vein, which other writer born this week, far beyond standard, had one character say the following to his inner double? "Either you or I, but both together is out of the question!" It may not be the one you think.

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously." - Albert Camus

"A man said to the universe:

'Sir, I exist!'

'However,' replied the universe,

'The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation." - Stephen Crane

"All art is a revolt against man's fate." - Andre Malraux

This Week in Reading November 1 - 7

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature

Philosopher, novelist Albert Camus, poet Odysseus Elytis

Novelists and story writers
Stephen Crane, Sholem Asch, Robert Musil, Martin Flavin, Herman Broch, Moa Martinson, James Jones, Christopher Wood, Geoffrey Wolff, Charles Frazier, Thomas Mallon, Michael Cunningham

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: William Cullen Bryant, C. K. Williams Playwrights: Thomas Kyd, Charles MacArthur, A. R. Gurney, Sam Shepard

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Edward Said Believers: Billy Graham Historians: Will Durant, Henry Troyat, Paul Johnson

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Will Rogers Essayists: Eugene Debs, Andre Malraux, Diana E. H. Russell, Shere Hite, Stephen Greenblatt, Bernard-Henri Levy, Joe Queenan Editors: Karl Baedecker Journalists: Ida M. Tarbell, Grantland Rice, Walter Cronkite, James Reston, James Kilpatrick, Pat Buchanan, Maria Shriver Officials: Joseph C. Wilson Media and Others: Mike Nichols, Larry Flynt, Dennis Miller, Morgan Spurlock, Jenny McCarthy

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Gordon Dickson

Visual Artists
Manga: Goseki Kojimba

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Samuel Marshak Teens: Joyce Maynard

Events to read about this week:
Standard Time, Election Day, Weather Bureau, Stamp Act, Hydrogen Bomb, George Boole, first woman voter, TS Eliot naturalizes, Spruce Goose, GB Shaw theatre lights, Quiz Show scandal, federal income tax, PBS, King Tut, Guy Fawkes, Meet the Press, MOMA.

Obituaries
Spanish novelist Francisco Ayala (103)
Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (100)
Suspense novelist Lionel Davidson (87)
Illustrator Don Punchatz (73)

This Week’s Questions:
Who, born this week, said:

"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously. "

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

"All art is a revolt against man's fate."

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
"I like to think of poetry as statements made on the way to the grave." - Dylan Thomas

"If poetry comes not as easily as leaves from a tree, it had better not come at all." - John Keats

"Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity." - John Betjeman (Who was not born last week. Misread Berryman for Betjeman. Was on vacation, sorry. Small fonts on a borrowed laptop.)

"Words should be an intense pleasure to a writer, just as leather should be to a shoemaker." - Evelyn Waugh

This Week in Reading October 25 - 31

Authors born this week -

Novelists and story writers
Andrei Bely, Vincent Starrett, Enid Bagnold, Evelyn Waugh, Dominick Dunne, Nawal el-Saadawi, Maxine Hong Kingston, Anne Tyler, Kinky Friedman, Pat Conroy, Joseph Boyden, Zadie Smith, Irina Denezhkina

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: John Keats, Paul Valery, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Ezra Pound, John Berryman, Dylan Thomas, John Hollander, Sylvia Plath, Andrew Motion Playwrights: Richard Sheridan, Jean Giraudoux, Zoe Atkins, Ruth Gordon, Louis Malle

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Erasmus, A. J. Ayer Scientists: Paul Farmer Historians: Thomas Babington Macaulay, Henry Steele Commager, Martin Gilbert Biographers: James Boswell, Robert A. Caro, Daniel Mark Epstein

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: John Cleese, Fran Lebowitz Essayists: Emily Post Editors: David Remnick Journalists: Dan Rather, Jane Pauley Officials: Theodore Roosevelt, Warren Christopher, Hillary Rodham Clinton Media and Others: Napoleon Hill, Fred Friendly, James Carville, Bill Gates, Matt Drudge

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Dick Francis, Anne Perry

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Science Fiction: Frederic Brown, Neal Stephenson

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Jan Duursema, June Brigman Cartoonists: Bill Maudlin

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Henry Winkler

Events to read about this week:

Chaucer is buried in Westminster Abbey, Henry Fielding becomes a justice of the peace and starts British detective work. The painter Picasso and costumer Edith Head are born, and the Erie Canal, the Patriot Act, the Federalist Papers, Harvard, and the Internet are created, while the Statue of Liberty is dedicated, much of it during Halloween week.

This Week’s Questions:

Who, born this week, said these about writing?

"I like to think of poetry as statements made on the way to the grave."

"If poetry comes not as easily as leaves from a tree, it had better not come at all."

"Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity."

"Words should be an intense pleasure to a writer, just as leather should be to a shoemaker."

Answers to Last Week's Questions:

Winning it in 1967, Miguel Angel Asturias is so far the only Nobel literature prizewinner from Guatemala, while all the others last week were from countries that had other winners. Like some other Nobel prizewinning authors he also wrote in exile about the struggles of social cultures under totalitarianism. Asturias said, according to Contemporary Authors in Biography Resource Center, "Latin American literature is still a literature of combat ... The novel is the only means I have of making the needs and aspirations of my people known to the world."

This Week in Reading October 18 - 24

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Philosopher Henri Bergson (1927), storywriter Ivan Bunin (1933), storywriter Miguel Angel Asturias (1967), playwright, novelist Elfriede Jelinek (2004), novelist Doris Lessing (2007)

Novelists and story writers
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Thomas Hughes, H. L. Davis, Emily Kimbrough, Marghanita Laski, Norman Rush, Terry McMillan, Nick Tosches, Bao Ninh, Patti Davis, Carrie Fisher, Rick Moody, Tracy Chevalier

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Leigh Hunt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alphonse de Lamartine, Arthur Rimbaud, Will Carleton, Denise Levertov, Robert Pinsky, Ntozake Shange Playwrights: Heinrich von Kleist, Sidney Kingsley, Moss Hart, Wendy Wasserstein

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: John Dewey Believers: Deepak Chopra Scientists: Neltje Blanchan, Martin Gardner, Joyce Brothers Historians: Lewis Mumford, Tariq Ali Biographers: Randy Pausch

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: John Gould, Art Buchwald, Lewis Grizzard Essayists: Thomas Browne, Logan Pearsall Smith, Frances Fitzgerald, Michael Eric Tyson, Deborah Blum, Augusten Burroughs Editors: Pierre Larousse Journalists: Jack Reed, A.J. Liebling, Jack Anderson Media and Others: Harvey Penick, Bobby Seale, Michelle Malkin

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Edogawa Rampo, Frederic Dannay (Ellery Queen), John Le Carre Crime: Ann Rule, Andrew Vachss Suspense: Michael Crichton

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Ursula LeGuin, Phillip Pullman, Lynn Flewelling Science Fiction: Charles Stross

Visual Artists
Illustrators: N. C. Wyeth Cartoonists: Bob Kane

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Sara Josepha Hale Teens: Laurie Halse Anderson

Events to read about this week:
Mason Dixon line, Cornwallis surrenders, architect Christopher Wren, Bela Lugosi, HUAC, Nelson wins at Trafalgar, Alfred Nobel, Anti-Vietnam War march, Liszt, Timothy Leary, Sarah Bernhardt, Johnny Carson, the IPod, the UN.

This Week’s Questions:
There are five winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature this week. Most from countries that had other winners but which one is the only one from a country?

Answers to Last Week’s Questions:
The National Book Award finalists were announced last week:

Fiction

Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage

Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite

Marcel Theroux, Far North

Nonfiction
David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook

Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species

Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy

T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Poetry
Rae Armantrout, Versed

Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again

Carl Phillips, Speak Low

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval

Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy

Young People’s Literature
Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Phillip Hooose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

David Small, Stitches

Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times

Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped

Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters - Gore Vidal

Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community - Dave Eggers

This Week in Reading October 11 - 17

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Playwright Eugene O’Neill, (1936), novelist Francois Mauriac (1952), poet Eugenio Montale (1975), novelist Gunter Grass (1999)

Novelists and story writers
Michael Lermontov, Elinor Glyn, Katherine Mansfield, Nathaniel West, Conrad Richter, C. P. Snow, Ann Petry, Sumner Locke Elliot, Kathleen Winsor, Mario Puzo, Miguel Delibes, Italo Calvino, Colin Channer

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Virgil, e. e. cummings, Paul Engle, R. H. W Dillard Playwrights: Georg Buchner, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, Alice Childress

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, Michael Foucault Believers: Mary Daly Scientists: Robert Atkins Historians: Arna Bontemps, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Biographers: Hugo Young

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: P.G. Wodehouse, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Stephen Clarke Essayists: John Kenneth Galbraith, John W. Dean, Thomas Boswell, Katha Pollit, Ariel Levy Editors: Noah Webster, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Coles Journalists: Jimmy Breslin Officials: Dwight D. Eisenhower, C. Everett Koop, Sarah Ferguson Media and Others: Aliester Crowley, Lee Iacocca, Tim McCarver, Jim Palmer, Suzanne Somers, Chris Wallace, Richard Roeper

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Crime: Ed McBain, Elmore Leonard

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Robert Jordan Science Fiction: George Turner

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Historical Romance: Alice Chetwynd Ley

Adventure / Westerns
Westerns: Elmore Leonard

Visual Artists
Photographers: Paul Strand Cartoonists: Herbert Block Comic Book Writers: Jerry Siegel

Events to read about this week:
Initialisms abound this week, DAR, SNL, USN, and WMDs. Also the Normans conquered Britain, and Gibbons conquered Rome. The Germans found October was the best time to drink beer, but nearly half of October was taken away when the new calendar was made. (Just that one year.) Columbus found an island but thought it was Asia, the Cardiff Giant was unearthed but it was not what it was purported to be, the World Series was held in California but didn’t get started. At least we’re grateful that the Disney Company was started so that Teen Readers and the ever growing world population could ignore the bad stuff.

Obituaries
Mystery Writers of America Grand Master mystery novelist, screenwriter Stuart M. Kaminsky (75). He wrote over seventy books, and is credited with helping to start the career of Sara Paretsky. His most recent popular character was Lew Fonseca, a process server who works for an investigation firm. Other characters were a Russian Inspector, Porfiry Rostinkov, and a Hollywood private investigator, Toby Peters.

This Week’s Questions:
The National Book Awards finalists for this year were announced this week. Who are they? And what other two awards are being given to persons of letters?

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:

James Whitcomb Riley of Indiana, the “Hoosier poet,” wrote, “When the frost is on the punkin, and the fodder's in the shock .. When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here," in a poem entitled by the first phrase. ‘Fodder’ means food for livestock, and ‘shock’ means usually the stalk it grows on, such as corn stalks that would have been harvested and put away in storage bins and barns to be used throughout the winter.

Riley, probably much forgotten now outside of Indiana and library children's rooms because of his too child friendly sing-song rhymes, also wrote a poem entitled “Little Orphant Annie,” from which has grown comic strips, books, Broadway plays and movies, and another one called “The Raggedy Man.” The dollmaker of the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, also from which grew stories, comic books, and screen features, took the name from those two poems by Riley which he found in books on his nearby bookshelf. Riley has had a huge effect on America popular culture because of his prolific writings.

This Week in Reading October 4 - 10

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature was announced this week, going to a Romanian-born novelist who lives in exile in Germany, Herta Muller. She writes, according to the Nobel committee, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, [to] depict ... the landscape of the dispossessed." Her novels, few of which have been translated into English yet, are about people constrained by a dictatorial Communist regime. Ms. Muller was forbidden from publication in her home country until she moved to Germany.

Authors born this week -

Nobel Prize in Literature
Story writer Ivo Andric (1961), novelist Claude Simon (1985), playwright Harold Pinter (2005)

Novelists and story writers
Alexis Kivi, Damon Runyon, Mario de Andrade, Caroline Jordan, R.K. Narayan, Jose Donoso, James Clavell, Rona Barrett, Marie-Claire Blais, Frederick Barthelme, Benjamin Cheever, Edward P. Jones, Jonathan Littell

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Marina Tsvetaeva, Clive James, John Lennon, Diane Ackerman Playwrights: Joshua Logan, Amiri Baraka, Vaclaw Havel

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Richard Rorty Believers: Jonathan Edwards, Phillip Berrigan, Jesse Jackson Scientists: R. D. Laing Historians: Walter Lord, Bill James Biographers: Jill Kerr Conway

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Roy Blount, Joy Behar Essayists: William Zinsser Editors: Denis Diderot Journalists: Brendan Gill, Shana Alexander, Steve Coll, Dan Savage Officials: Media and Others: Giuseppi Verdi, Thor Heyerdahl, Oliver North

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Suspense: Joseph Finder

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Horror: Anne Rice Science Fiction: Frank Herbert, David Brin

Romance / Historical Fiction Writers
Romance: Jackie Collins, Nora Roberts Historical Fiction: Thomas Keneally

Visual Artists
Graphic Novelists: Harvey Pekar Manga: Kazuki Takashashi Cartoonists: Bill Keane

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: James Whitcomb Riley, Louise Fitzhugh, R. L. Stine Teens: Sherman Alexie

Events to read about this week:
Tyndale prints the first Bible in English; the Gregorian Calendar gets rid of several days just to catch up; Sputnik, the world's first satellite is launched; the Naval Academy, Monty Python, PBS, the first talking movie, and Homeland security are also launched, along with the life of an Armenian film director. On the bad side, Chicago nearly burned down, a baseball team's players are banned from baseball whether they threw the World Series or not, and the US began its invasion of Afghanistan.

This Week’s Questions:

It's autumn now, and "the frost is on the punkin, and the fodder's in the shock." What? Who, born this week, wrote that and what does it mean? What other well known characters and other works came out of that writer's pen?

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
Novelist, humanitarian Elie Wiesel and President, humanitarian Jimmy Carter, who were born last week, both won the Nobel Peace Prize. (President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace prize this week.)

Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin appointed Kay Ryan as U.S. Poet Laureate, and the Bancroft Library at UC, Berkeley, home of the Mark Twain papers and numerous rare books and manuscripts, is named after California historian George Bancroft.

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood,banned in many places, made the

American Library Association’s list of Banned American Classics.