Status Updates From A Reader's Book of Days: Tr...

November 15

BORN: 1920 J.G. Ballard (Crash, Empire of the Sun), Shanghai
1941 Daniel Pinkwater (The Hoboken Chicken Emergency), Memphis

DIED: 1932 Charles W. Chestnutt (The Marrow of Tradition), 74, Cleveland
1978 Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Some), 76, New York City

November 14

BORN: 1907 Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking), Vimmerby, Sweden
1907 William Steig (Shrek! Sylvester and the Magic Pebble), Brooklyn

DIED: 1831 G.W.F. Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit), 61, Berlin
1965 Dawn Powell (The Locusts Have No King), 68, New York City

November 13

BORN: 354 St. Augustine (Confessions, city of God), Thagaste, Roman Africa
1850 Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Kidnapped), Edinburgh

DIED 1955 Bernard DeVoto (Across the Wide Missouri), 58, New York City
2012 Jack Gilbert (Views of Jeopardy, Refusing Heaven), Berkeley, Calif.

BORN: 1915 Roland Barthes (Mythologies, S/Z), Cherbourg, France
1945 Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains), New York City
DIED: 1984 Chester Himes (If He Hollers Let Him Go), 75, Moraira, Spain
2007 Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives), 78, New York City

November 11

BORN: 1922 Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle), Indianapolis
1954 Mary Gaitskill (Bad Behaviour, Veronica), Lexington, Ky.

DIED: 1999 Jacobo Timerman (Prisoner without a Name, Cell Without a Number), 76, Buenos Aires
2005 Peter Drucker (Concept of the Corporation), 95, Claremont, Calif.

November 10

BORN: 1893 John P. Marquand (The Late George Apley), Wilmington, Del.
1960 Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, American Gods), Portchester, England

DIED: 1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa (Sozuboyt, A Month and a Day),54, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
2007 Norman Mailer (The Armies of the Night, 84, New York City

November 9

BORN: 1924 Robert Frank (The Americans, The Lines of My Hand), Zurich
1934 Carl Sagan (Cosmos, Contact, The Dragons of Eden), Brooklyn

DIED: 2001 Dorothy Dunnett (The Game of Kings), 78, Edinburgh
2004 Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), 50, Stockholm

I started this in August 2022, so I’ll be continuing my reading through July 2023.

November 8

BORN: 1900 Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind), Atlanta
1954 Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go), Nagasaki, Japan

DIED: 1674 John Milton (Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes), 65, London
1998 Rumer Godden (Black Narcissus), 90, Courance, Scotland

November 7

BORN: 1923 Albert Camus (The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall), Dréan, French Algeria
1954 Guy Gavriel Kay (Tigana, The Summer Tree), Weyburn, Sask.

DIED: 1910 Leo Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilyich), 82, Astapovo, Russia
1992 Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road), 66, Birmingham, Ala.

November 6

BORN: 1921 James Jones (From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line), Robinson, Ill.
1952 Michael Cunningham (The Hours), Cincinnati

DIED: 1901 Kate Greenaway (Under the Window, Marigold Garden), 55, London
1999 George V. Higgins (The Friends of Eddie Coyle) 59, Milton, Mass.

November 5

BORN: 1926 John Berger (Ways of Seeing, G.), London
1943 Sam Shepard (Buried Child, True West), Fort Sheridan, Ill.

DIED: 1977 René Goscinny (Asterix, Lucky Luke), 51, Paris
2005 John Fowles (The French Lieutenant's Woman), 79, Lyme Regis, England

November 4

BORN: 1879 Will Rogers (Letters of a Self Made Diplomat to His President), Oologah, Okla.
1950 Charles Fraser (Cold Mountain, Nightwoods), Asheville, N.C.

DIED: 1918 Wilfred Owen ("Anthem for Doomed Youth"), 25, Sambre-Oise Canal, France
1933 John Jay Chapman (Emmerson and Other Essays), 71, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

November 3

BORN: 1903 Walker Evans (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), St. Louis
1942 Martin Cruz Smith (Gorky Park, Stalin's Ghost), Reading, Pa.

DIED: 1957 Wilhelm Reich (The Mass Psychology of Gascism), 60, Lewisburg, Pa.
2001 E. H. Gombrich (The Story of Art, Art and Illusion), 92, London

November 2

BORN: 1927 Steve Ditko (The Amazing Spiderman, Tales to Astonish), Johnstown, Pa.
1949 Lois McMaster Bujold (Paladin of Souls), Columbus, Ohio

DIED: 1950 George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion), 94, Ayot St. Lawrence, England
1961 James Thurber (My Life and Hard Times, The 13 Clocks), New York City

November 1

BORN: 1959 Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel), Nottingham, England
1965 James Wood (How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate), Durham, England

DIED: 1907 Alfred Jarry (Ubu Roi, The Supermale), 34, Paris
1972 Ezra Pound (The Cantos, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley), 89, Venice, Italy

October 31

BORN: 1795 John Keats ("Ode to a Nightingale,""Ode to Melancholy"), London
1959 Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle), Fort Meade, Md.

DIED: 1960 H.L. Davis (Honey in the Horn, Beulah Land), 66, San Antonio, Tex.
2008 Studs Terkel (Working, The Great War), 96, Chicago

October 30

BORN: 1821 Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov), Moscow
1877 Irma Rombauer (The Joy of Cooking) St. Louis

DIED: 1987 Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces), 83, Honolulu
2009 Claude Lévi-Strauss (Tristes Tropiques, The Raw and the Cooked), 100, Paris

October 29

BORN: 1740 James Boswell (Life of Johnson), Edinburgh
1905 Henry Green (Living, Loving, Party Going), Tewkesbury, England

DIED: 1911 Joseph Pulitzer (publisher, New York World), 64, Charleston, S.C.
1924 Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden), 74, Plandome, N.Y.

October 28

BORN: 1818 van Turgenev (A Sportsman's Notebook, First Love), Oriole, Russia
1903 Evelyn Waugh (Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies), London

DIED: 1704 John Locke, (Two Treaties of Government), 72, Essex, England
1998 Ted Hughes (The Hawk in the Rain, Birthday Letters), 68, London

October 27

BORN: 1914 Dylan Thomas (A Child's Christmas in Wales), Swansea, Wales
1932 Sylvia Plath (The Colossus, The Bell Jar), Boston

DIED: 1975 Rex Stout (Fer-de-Lance, Some buried Caesar), Danbury, Conn,
1977 James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce), 85, University Park, Md.