Interesting stories and lots more!
The American author Kurt Vonnegut passed away last Wednesday at his home in Manhatten in New York City. He wrote nineteen books in his lifetime. Various writers are now praising Vonnegut. One web article even goes so far as to say that Stephen King now wears the title of America’s greatest living writer – that is until he too goes to that great hall of writing in the sky.
Project for now: Read the best of Kurt Vonnegut’s titles.
Thursday 29th March 2007
Today like so many other days I ventured into Chapters Bookstore in Parnell Street, Dublin. This new bookstore which opened early in January 2007 is excellent as it’s not as crowded as Easons and it has as many book titles if not more.
The following authors interest me. First off is the contemporary German writer Gunter Grass. He is highly rated both in Germany and throughout the world. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. More details about Gunter Grass can be found on the web site Books and Writers.
Ernest Hemingway is also one of my favourite must-read authors. As a child I remember being fascinated by the film version of his book The Old Man and the Sea. I noticed it’s a very slim volume but what a story. Read it and be enthralled!
E.M. Forster and the book which made him famous A Passage to India is also on my reading list. It’s a fairly large tome but judging by the reviews on the dust jacket and references to it by other famous writers it is definitely a book worth reading.
Back in the year 2000 I went to see the film Finding Forrester about the Pulitzer Prize winning author William Forrester. He wrote only one book Avalon Landing but it earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. I will definitely read the work of William Forrester. And you dear reader should do likewise.
Perhaps the one of the most interviewed of authors is the English writer Philip Pullman. This morning he was on the Radio 4 programme In Conversation presented by Terry Jones. Pullman became famous for his Dark Materials Trilogy, the first book is entitled Northern Lights. He said he was very much influenced by John Bunyan’s The Pilgrims Progress and he also stated that mediaeval and classical literature are the original and the best stories to read and learn from. I intend to read his work in the near future. “Writing is a journey of discovery,” Pullman says of writing. And how right he is! More on Philip Pullman in the next post.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn is the famous Russian author. I first discovered his work in his great novel THE FULL CIRCLE, which I picked up at the Library in Dublin Bus, Donnybrook Bus Garage. More on this Russian writer later….
