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A Writer's Wit: Julianna Baggott

9/30/2021

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I am politically pro-choice, but personally pro-life. I have my faith but refuse to force it on the world at large—especially this world, so brutal and unjust. I cannot make these wrenching personal life and death decisions for others—nor do I believe they should be made by a church run by childless men.
​Julianna Baggott
Author of Burn
Born September 30, 1969
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J. Baggott
TOMORROW: My Book World | Ellis Amburn's Subterranean Kerouac
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A Writer's Wit: Bryant Gumbel

9/29/2021

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I have been a sports fan my whole life. To be able to talk about sports in an intelligent, journalistic fashion and to do things of a serious nature is a dream job.
​Bryant Gumbel
Host of HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel
Born September 29, 1948
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B. Gumbel
FRIDAY: My Book World | Amburn Ellis's Subterranean Kerouac
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A Writer's Wit: Simon Winchester

9/28/2021

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Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known, is a fairly risky place to live.
​Simon Winchester
Author of Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
Born September 28, 1944
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S. Winchester
FRIDAY: My Book World | Amburn Ellis's Subterranean Kerouac
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Fond but Sad Farewell

9/24/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
​Horace Walpole
Author of The Mysterious Mother: A Tragedy
Born September 24, 1717
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H. Walpole

My Book World

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García, Rodrigo. A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez. New York: HarperVia, 2021.

The son of Gabriel García Márquez writes a brief but compelling remembrance of his famous father and formidable mother. Each of the five parts begins with a brief epigraph from one of Márquez’s works. North American culture has so much to learn from our friends in South America whose profound sense of family—in spite of its many complexities—outshines our own. I found myself envying the relationship that Rodrigo has with his parents, his brother, his own children and his nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, grandparents long gone but whose influence seems eternal—no wonder Márquez could write a book as profound as One Hundred Years of Solitude. He needed only comb his own ancestry for his complete cast of characters. I envision myself reading this book again and again.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Amburn Ellis's Subterranean Kerouac.

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A Writer's Wit: Antonio Tabucchi

9/23/2021

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But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.
​Antonio Tabucchi
Author of Time Ages in a Hurry
Born September 23, 1943
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A. Tabucchi
FRIDAY: My Book World | Rodrigo García's A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez
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A Writer's Wit: Fay Weldon

9/22/2021

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The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world. 
Fay Weldon
Author of The Fat Woman's Joke
​Born September 22, 1931
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F. Weldon
FRIDAY: My Book World | Rodrigo García's A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez
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A Writer's Wit: Janet Burroway

9/21/2021

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The mystique and the false glamour of the writing profession grow partly out of a mistaken belief that people who can express profound ideas and emotions have ideas and emotions more profound than the rest of us. It isn't so. The ability to express is a special gift with a special craft to support it and is spread fairly equally among the profound, the shallow, and the mediocre.
​Janet Burroway
Co-Author of Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition: A Guide to a Narrative Craft
Born September 21, 1936
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J. Burroway
FRIDAY: My Book World | Rodrigo García's A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez
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A Magical Doorman

9/17/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
Time is a storm in which we are all lost.
​William Carlos Williams
Author of Paterson
​Born September 17, 1883
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W. C. Williams

My Book World

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Arenas, Reinaldo. The Doorman. Translated by Dolores M. Koch. New York: Grove, 1991 (1987).

The more I read of Arenas’s work the more I am charmed by a skilled writer’s use of magical realism. In this instance, Juan, a young Cuban immigrant is hired as doorman by a fairly exclusive residential hotel in New York City. He does his very best to learn the names of all the occupants and their quirks and preferences. He fetches and messages for them. He does his best to learn the names of all their pets as well, a veritable Noah’s Ark from the tiniest to the largest. This odd point is where one begins to sense the leap readers are to make, from reality to magic. The animals begin to speak to Juan in “human language,” and at first that seems fine with Juan. But then the situation evolves into something more complicated (no spoilers). Juan is on a spiritual journey to locate a “door” that will lead him and everyone who wants into a better world. Arenas is skilled in dragging along even the most skeptical of us because he has a larger point to make. 

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Rodrigo García's  A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez

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A Writer's Wit: David Benedictus

9/16/2021

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Public schoolboys are not merely conservatives, they are by nature totalitarian reactionaries.
​David Benedictus
Author of You're a Big Boy Now
Born September 16, 1938
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D. Benedictus
TOMORROW: My Book World | R. Arenas's The Doorman
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A Writer's Wit: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

9/15/2021

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I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that people most tell me are “unbelievable” are those that are most closely based on the real, those least diluted by my imagination.
​Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Author of Americanah
Born September 15, 1977
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C. N. Adichie
FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's The Doorman
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A Writer's Wit: David Wojnarowicz

9/14/2021

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​Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom.
David Wojnarowicz  [voy-nah-ROH-vitch]
Creator of the film,  A Fire in My Belly 
Born September 14, 1954
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D. Wojnarowicz
FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's The Doorman
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Rise and Fall of an Institution

9/10/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
AIDS and malaria and TB are national security issues. A worldwide program to get a start on dealing with these issues would cost about $25 billion . . . . It's, what, a few months in Iraq. 
​Jared Diamond
Author of Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change
Born September 10, 1937
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J. Diamond

My Book World

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Leonnig, Carol. Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. New York: Random, 2021.

This book is one of the most fascinating contemporary reads to emerge in a long time. Leonnig, a distinguished Washington Post reporter, delves into the 155-year history of the United States Secret Service—the agency designed primarily to keep the president and family safe. She brings to light its early history: Within a period of thirty-six years, the U.S. experiences three presidential assassinations. Lincoln. Garfield. McKinley. Following Lincoln’s death, the Service is established with minimal or feeble funding. After the third assassination, the congress still refuses to provide additional protection, not wanting the president to be treated like royalty. When Kennedy is assassinated, the congress ultimately realizes it must provide more resources for the Secret Service. And presidents must adjust their thinking. Kennedy may, in part, have contributed to his own death by not adhering to the Service’s request that he not get as close to crowds as he liked. And also by not riding in an open car and by not allowing agents to stand on the rear bumper of his limo.
 
Leonnig explores subsequent presidencies to inform readers in great detail about each administration since: Ford’s two close calls. Reagan’s near-death attack. How the Service erodes during Bush’s and Clinton’s administrations. How the Service is pushed beyond its capabilities during Obama’s era when threats and attempts on him rise exponentially and when two different “jumpers” leap over the White House fence, one of them actually coming within feet of the Obama family’s living quarters. The author informs us of the unrest within the Service: the frequent change of leadership, the history of good old boy networks that reward relationships instead of meritorious service. She tells of the scandals that rock the service, including details of the one in Cartagena where at least ten agents become extremely drunk and involve themselves with prostitutes. Her conclusion: many problems still exist. The agency needs a complete restructuring, much more funding, and a coordinated effort to heartily renew its mission of always putting the lives of the president and family and other figures ahead of lives of agents sworn to protect them. Until these things occur, the Secret Service will remain stretched beyond its capabilities and perhaps remain a second-rate organization.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's The Doorman

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A Writer's Wit: Leon Edel

9/9/2021

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The answer to old age is to keep one's mind busy and to go on with one's life as if it were interminable. I always admired Chekhov for building a new house when he was dying of tuberculosis.
​Leon Edel
Author of Henry James: A Life
Born September 9, 1907
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L. Edel
TOMORROW: My Book World | Carol Leonnig's Zero Fail
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A Writer's Wit: Ann Beattie

9/8/2021

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Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.
Ann Beattie
Author of Chilly Scenes of Winter
Born September 8, 1947
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A. Beattie
FRIDAY: My Book World | Carol Leonnig's Zero Fail
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A Writer's Wit: Peggy Noonan

9/7/2021

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Part of courage is simple consistency.
​Peggy Noonan
Author of The Time of Our Lives
​Born September 7, 1950
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P. Noonan
FRIDAY: My Book World | Carol Leonnig's Zero Fail
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A True Crime Scene Postmortem

9/3/2021

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A WRITER'S WIT
When you are absorbed in a biographical subject, you get so close you don't realise the potential effect of what you say. You are trying to get at the truth.
​Sarah Bradford
Author of Diana
Born September 3, 1938
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S. Bradford

My Book World

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Brottman, Mikita. Couple Found Slain: After a Family Murder. New York: Holt, 2021.

This true crime book prides itself in presenting a story that is different from others about murder within a family, and I do believe it is an interesting approach. Brottman offers only a few chapters about the dysfunctional family of a young man who murders his parents and the circumstances that may lead him to do such a thing. The rest of the book concerns itself with the young man’s incarceration in the state of Maryland’s mental health and legal systems. Young Brian Bechtold, once he realizes the severity of what he has done, turns himself in to the police. He expects he will go to prison, because, of course, he has committed murder. Instead, to this day, over fifty years of age, Brian remains a resident of Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center. His story is one of abuse by psychiatrists, other patients, and a legal system that does not give healthy support to people with mental problems. If only he were in prison, he would have far more freedom, including the freedom to rehabilitate, serve his time, and get out. But at Perkins he has become a lifer, and oddly, he may be saner than one or two of the professionals who “treat” him. Brottman’s prose is unrelentingly dead, a just-the-facts-ma’am kind of journalism, but perhaps that is what true fans of true crime expect.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's The Doorman

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A Writer's Wit: Cleveland Amory

9/2/2021

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You can't make the Duchess of Windsor into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The facts of life are very stubborn things.
​Cleveland Amory
Author of The Cat Who Came for Christmas
Born September 2, 1917
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C. Amory
TOMORROW: My Book World | M. Brottman's Couple Found Slain
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A Writer's Wit: Liz Carpenter

9/1/2021

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A major advantage of age is learning to accept people without passing judgment.
​Liz Carpenter
Author of Ruffles and Flourishes
Born September 1, 1920
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L. Carpenter
FRIDAY: My Book World | Mikita Brottman's Couple Found Slain
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