book reviews, opinions and fun by Norm Sigurdson
Norman Mailer, the pugnacious American novelist, essayist and activist was born in New York on January 31, 1923. He grew up in Brooklyn, where he was a good student in school. He was enrolled in Harvard University at the age of 16, earning a degree in aeronautical engineering. Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the …
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"I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life’s sensational pleasures." -Robert Benchley
Pierre Boulle, the French novelist and wartime secret agent died in Paris on January 30, 1994 at the age of eighty-one. Boulle was best known in the English language world for two of his books which became bestsellers in translation and were made into award-winning movies: The Bridge On the River Kwai and Planet of …
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Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (also known as The Arabic Booker) in 2014, the first Iraqi novel to do so. It has just been translated into English by Jonathan Wright, who has translated over a dozen Arabic novels, including several other IPAF winners. The bleak and darkly comic …
The American journalist, editor and essayist H.L. Mencken, known as "The Sage of Baltimore'" died on January 29, 1956 at the age of seventy-five. He had suffered a stroke in 1948 that left him unable to read or write for his final years. He often referred to 1948 as the year he died. He had …
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Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice was published on January 28, 1813. Its opening line -- "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." -- is one of the most famous in English literature. The novel was sold as a …
One of the greatest Canadian novelists, Mordacai Richler, was born in Montreal on January 27, 1931. He grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in the immigrant community centred on St. Urbain Street. He grew up speaking English, French and Yiddish. His grandfather was a well known rabbi in Poland and later in Canada. Richler …
"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept." —Angela Davis
John Millington Synge's play The Playboy of the Western World was first produced on January 26, 1907, at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin. It received a very hostile and violent reception from Irish nationalists and republicans who objected to Synge's less than flattering portrayal of his fellow countrymen. Rioting and brawling broke out inside the …
Virginia Woolf, the novelist and essayist was born in London on January 25, 1882 as Adeline Virginia Stephen. She was born into the wealthy and very literary family. She and her sister Vanessa were educated at home by their parents (somewhat haphazardly it seems) and the sisters were encouraged to follow their own literary tastes …
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"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." --W. Somerset Maugham
The comedic playwright William Congreve was born in Yorkshire on January 24, 1670. Congreve's family moved to Ireland while he was an infant and he grew up there, becoming a friend with the great satirist Jonathan Swift when they were fellow students at Trinity College, Dublin. Congreve moved to London to study law but concentrated …
Gustave Doré, the illustrator whose engravings provided the defining illustrations for many works of literature from The Bible to the Mother Goose tales, died in Paris on January 23, 1883, at the age of fifty-one. Doré never married and lived with his mother his entire life. Doré was much sought after by book publishers in …
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"One can acquire everything in solitude except character." --Stendhal
The great mystery and suspence writer Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas on January 19, 1921. Her parents divorced just ten days before her birth and Highsmith claimed that her mother later told her that she had tried to have her aborted. Highsmith continued to have a strained relationship with her mother and …
"The main objection to killing people as a punishment ... is that killing people is wrong." — Auberon Waugh
"Fire hath its force abated by water, not by wind; and anger must be allayed by cold words, and not by blustering threats." – Anne Bradstreet
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