Category: Books & Writers

was born in Petrovichi, Russia, on this date in 1920. From MPR’s The Writer’s Almanac

His family moved to Brooklyn in 1923, where they ran a candy shop for 40 years. Asimov wrote, edited or compiled several hundred books on subjects ranging from Don Juan and the Bible to humor and mathematics. He also wrote dozens of works of science fiction. He typed ninety words a minute, and he worked ten hours a day, seven days a week. He tried to turn out four thousand words before he got up from his typewriter every day.

Even though many of his works dealt with space travel and flight, Asimov was afraid of flying. His phobia began while trying to impress a date by going on a roller coaster at the 1940 New York World’s Fair. He traveled little in his lifetime because of his fear of flying, staying close to his home in New York.

Don Watson defends a language he says is being mangled by the globalising forces of obfuscation.

“Language is what gives me greatest pleasure,” he says. “I can’t laugh without it.” Yet in the depleted new language “you can’t tell a joke”.

“It’s incapable of carrying an emotion. It is the language equivalent of the assembly line. It turns human processes into mechanical ones.”

Is this new? Dictators and lawyers and priests have long used arcane speech to maintain authority. But something else is happening, Watson says – and that is the way everyone is busting to speak like a middle manager.

From an October 26, 2000, article in The New York Times:

Every Christmas for more than 150 years, children have hung their stockings by the chimney with care and learned to thank Clement Clarke Moore for the tradition.

Moore, a wealthy Manhattan biblical scholar, went down in history as the man who in 1823 created the American image of Santa Claus as author of the “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.” Better known as “The Night Before Christmas,” it became one of the most widely read poems in the world.

But did Moore really write it? In a new study of the poem’s early history, Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College and a scholar of authorial attribution, accuses Moore of committing literary fraud. He marshals a battery of circumstantial evidence to conclude that the poem’s spirit and style are starkly at odds with the body of Moore’s other writings.

In a new book, “Author Unknown,” (Henry Holt & Company) Mr. Foster argues that “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” first published anonymously in a Troy, N.Y., newspaper in 1823, closely matches the views and verse of Henry Livingston Jr., a gentleman-poet of Dutch descent.

The article goes on to explain Professor Foster’s findings.

The Writer’s Almanac for today also discusses the poem and its origins.

Today is Christmas Eve, the subject of the beloved holiday poem that begins:

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.

The poem, now known as “The Night Before Christmas,” was first published anonymously in a small newspaper in Upstate New York in 1823, and its original title was “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas.” It was a huge success, and it has been published in book form so many times that it now exists in more editions than any other Christmas book ever printed.

Fourteen years after its first publication, an editor attributed the poem to a wealthy professor of classical literature named Clement Clarke Moore. At first, Moore dismissed the poem as a trifle, but he eventually included it in a volume of his collected Poems (1844). A legend grew that Moore had been inspired to write the poem for his children during a sleigh ride home on Christmas Eve in 1822, and that he had based his version of Saint Nicholas on his Dutch chauffeur.

Recently, new evidence has come out that a Revolutionary War major named Henry Livingston Jr. may have been the actual author of “The Night Before Christmas.” His family has letters describing his recitation of the poem before it was originally published, and literary scholars have found many similarities between his work and “The Night Before Christmas.” He was also three quarters Dutch, and many of the details in the poem, including names of the reindeer, have Dutch origins.

But whoever wrote the poem, “The Night Before Christmas” changed the way Americans celebrate the holiday of Christmas by reinventing the character of Santa Claus. The name Santa Claus comes from Sinter Klaas, the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas. He was a bishop in Southwest Turkey in the 4th century and had a reputation for extraordinary generosity. He became known as the patron saint of children, and many European children began to celebrate St. Nicholas Eve on December 5th. On that day in Hungary, children leave boots out for St. Nicholas to fill with presents. In Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, children are visited by a man in bishop’s robes who listens to prayers and gives presents. In Holland, St. Nicholas arrives by steamboat from Spain, and travels around the country on a white horse, tossing gifts down chimneys.

“The Night Before Christmas” combined the celebrations of St. Nicholas Day and Christmas, and made children the focus of Christmas celebrations. The poem was also the first representation of Santa Claus as a magical, elf-like being who travels through the air on a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer.

After the publication of the poem, the ritual of gift giving became a boon to merchants, and they became Santa’s biggest fans. Stores began to launch Christmas advertising campaigns on Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving Day parades first began as Christmas shopping promotions. In 1939, the retail business community persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to set the annual date of Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November, which ensured a four-week shopping season each year. Retailers now count on Christmas for more than 50 percent of their annual sales. In Holland, children are now visited by St. Nicholas on December 5th, and on Christmas Eve they are visited by Santa Claus, whom they call, “American Christmas Man.”

Today Easterblogg describes a number of books he’s been reading. Among them:

Humboldt’s Cosmos by Gerard Helferich. On a five-year expedition that ended in 1804, adventurer Alexander von Humboldt became the first European to explore the Amazon basin, in the process cataloging thousands of plant species, gaining Europe’s first knowledge of the ancient Incas and climbing Chimborazo, a 20,600-foot volcano, needless to say, without oxygen tanks. Unlike Lewis and Clark, who traveled with a large government-funded party of assistants and cooks, von Humboldt and one companion trekked alone, hunting their own food, making indigenous friends, and managing to avoid severe injuries or disease. Upon his return, von Humboldt became one of the most celebrated people in Europe. His story is a great read….

The X in Sex by David Bainbridge. The author, a British researcher, devotes an entire book to the X chromosome, which in pairs causes womanhood. The X chromosome is much bigger than the Y chromosome that determines maleness, appears to have evolved differently and, Bainbridge asserts, contains so much more coding than male-determining chromosomes that “males and females are more different than they really need to be to play their roles in reproduction.” What does it mean that the X is so much bigger and richer than the Y? Maybe this is the leading edge of a long-term evolutionary trend. Men, you might want to look away from the page for the moment: Science magazine recently cited the possibility that “the Y is slowly fading as a chromosome,” eventually to be out-evolved in a science-fiction future in which all humans are primarily female. Men, read this book with a six-pack and a swimsuit calendar close at hand.

The Beast in the Garden by David Baron. In 1991, a mountain lion attacked and ate a 14-year-old boy jogging in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado. Five more people have since been killed in the United States and Canada by mountain lions, and dozens mauled. Baron explores what it means that lions are repopulating developed areas–with pollution declining, wilderness acreage expanding, and lion hunting forbidden, there will be ever-more bobcats, cougars, and panthers in American and Canadian exurban areas. Meanwhile, preservationists continue insisting that wolves and grizzlies be reintroduced into North America; the deep-green love of the grizzly seems to stem from the fact that it kills human beings, whom deep-greens detest. Lawsuits demanding the grizzly be reintroduced into the wild are at the moment a big political issue in the Rocky Mountain states and provinces.

The New York Times has published its Notable Books lists — high points in this year’s fiction and poetry, nonfiction, children’s books, mysteries and science fiction. There’s separate essays for travel and photography.

was born on this date in 1936. Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac has an interesting essay on Burke.

He’s best known for his series of detective novels featuring Dave Robicheaux, an ex-New Orleans policeman, Vietnam veteran, and recovering alcoholic. Burke’s novels have been compared to those by master crime novelists like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Burke started writing stories when he was in fourth grade, published his first story when he was 19, and wrote his first novel when he was 23. Half of Paradise (1965) was published just after he finished graduate school, and it got great reviews. Burke wrote a few more novels, but none of them sold well. He fell into depression and alcoholism. He had finished a book called The Lost Get-Back Boogie, but he couldn’t find anyone to publish it. He collected ninety-three rejection slips for the book over a period of ten years. He worked as a newspaper reporter, a land surveyor, a social worker, a forest ranger, a teacher, and a truck driver. He later said, “I reached a point . . . where I didn’t care whether I lived or died.” Finally, in 1985, The Lost Get-Back Boogie was published by Louisiana State University Press. The novel is about a released prisoner who goes to live on a Montana ranch with the family of one of his friends from prison. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Burke’s novels have been doing well ever since.

Burke said, “I believe that whatever degree of talent I possess is a gift and must be treated as such. To misuse one’s talent, to be cavalier about it, to set it aside because of fear or sloth is unpardonable.”

Notice on SI.com web page seeking discussion:

There are very few certainties in life, but here’s one: If your letters come in too long or all in capital letters or laced with obscenities … they won’t even get read.

We don’t care if you’ve written the sequel to the Gettysburg Address, it has to come in bright and tight if you want it to appear here.

American Library Association January 13, 2003

The best-selling Harry Potter series of children’s books by J.K. Rowling tops the list of books most challenged in 2002, according to the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. The Potter series drew complaints from parents and others concerned about the books’ focus on wizardry and magic.

The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received a total of 515 reports of challenges last year, a 15 percent increase since 2001. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. The majority of challenges are reported by public libraries, schools and school libraries. According to Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, the number of challenges reflects only incidents reported, and for each challenge reported, four or five remain unreported.

The “Ten Most Challenged Books of 2002” reflect a wide variety of themes. The books, in order of most frequently challenged are:

• Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling, for its focus on wizardry and magic.
• Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, for being sexually explicit, using offensive language and being unsuited to age group.
• “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier (the “Most Challenged” book of 1998), for using offensive language and being unsuited to age group.
• “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, for sexual content, racism, offensive language, violence and being unsuited to age group.
• “Taming the Star Runner” by S.E. Hinton, for offensive language.
• “Captain Underpants” by Dav Pilkey, for insensitivity and being unsuited to age group, as well as encouraging children to disobey authority.
• “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, for racism, insensitivity and offensive language.
• “Bridge to Terabithia” by Katherine Paterson, for offensive language, sexual content and Occult/Satanism.
• “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” by Mildred D. Taylor, for insensitivity, racism and offensive language.
• “Julie of the Wolves” by Julie Craighead George, for sexual content, offensive language, violence and being unsuited to age group.

Off the list this year, but on the list for several years past, are the “Goosebumps” and “Fear Street” series, by R. L. Stine, which were challenged for being too frightening for young people and depicting occult or “Satanic” themes, “It’s Perfectly Normal,” a sex education book by Robie Harris, for being too explicit, especially for children, “Of Mice and Men,” by John Steinbeck, for using offensive language and being unsuited to age group, “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger for offensive language and being unsuited to age group, “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker, for sexual content and offensive language, “Fallen Angels,” by Walter Dean Myers, for offensive language and being unsuited to age group, and “Blood and Chocolate” by Annette Curtis Klause for being sexually explicit and unsuited to age group.

From the West Valley View:

Author Debby Buchanan doesn’t fancy herself a fortune-teller, seer or any other sort of oracle who can see into the future. It was just coincidence that made her visit to Scott Libby Elementary School last week so unique.

When the children’s book writer — she penned “It Rained on the Desert Today” — stopped by the campus Nov. 12, it rained on the desert that day.

Literacy in U.S. Cities, a “study compiled in summer 2003, pieces together a literacy profile of America’s 64 largest cities, drawing from U.S. Census data, newspaper circulation rates, library resources, publishers and other public documents.”

When Theodor Seuss Geisel was awarded an honorary degree at Princeton in 1985 the entire graduating class recited Green Eggs and Ham.

Green Eggs and Ham is the third largest selling book in the English language — ever.

Welcome To Seussville!