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

July 18

BORN: 1937 Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Louisville, Ky.
1969 Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love; The Last American Man), Waterbury, Conn.

DIED: 1817 Jane Austen (Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion), 41, Winchester, England
1899 Horatio Alger Jr. (Ragged Dick, Luck and Pluck), 67, Natick, Mass.

July 17

BORN: 1902 Christina Stead (The Man Who Loved Children), Rockdale, Australia
1951 Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down, Guests of the Ayatollah), St Louis

DIED: 1790 Adam Smith (The Wealth o Nations), 67, Edinburgh
2001 Katherine Graham (Personal History), 84, Boise, Idaho

July 16

BORN: 1920 Anatole Broyard (Intoxicated by My Illness, Kafka Was the Rage), New Orleans
1928 Anita Brookner (Hotel du Lac, Look at Me), London
DIED: 1995 May Sarton (Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing), 83, York, Maine
1995. Stephen Spender (World Within World, The Temple), 86, London

July 15

BORN: 1892 Walter Benjamin (Illuminations, The Arcades Project), Berlin
1949 Richard Russo (Empire Falls, Straight Man), Johnstown, N.Y.

DIED: 1999 Gina Berriault (Women in Their Bed, The Son) 73, Greenbrae, Calif.
2003 Roberto Bolaño (2666, By Night in Chile, Amulet), 50 Barcelona

July 14

BORN: 1916 Natalia Ginzburg (The City and the House), Palermo, Italy
1966 Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret), East Brunswick, N.J.

DIED: 1817 Germaine de Staël (Delphine; Corinne, or Italy), 51, Paris
1984 Ernest Tidyman (Shaft, Shaft's Big Score), 56, London

July 13

BORN: 1894 Isaac Babel (Red Cavalry, Odessa Tales), Odessa, Russian Empire
1934 Wole-Soyinka (Ake, Death and the King's Horseman), Alseokuta, Nigeria

DIED: 1946 Alfred Stieglitz (Camera Work), 82, New York City
1983 Gabrielle Roy (The Tin Flute, Street of Riches), 74, Quebec City

July 12

BORN: 1812 Henry David Thoreau (Walden, Civil Disobedience), Concord, Mass.
1904 Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), Parral, Chile

DIED: 1536 Erasmus (In Praise of Folly, On Civility in Children), 69, Basel, Switzerland
2010 Harvey Pekar (American Splendour). 70, Cleveland Heights, Ohio

July 11

BORN: 1899 E.B. White (Charlotte's Web, Here Is New York), Mount Vernon, N.Y.
1967 Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake), London

DIED: 1966 Delmore Schwartz (In Dreams Begin Responsibilities), 52, New York City
2012 Donald J. Sobol (Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective), 87, Miami, Fla.

July 10

BORN: 1871 Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time), Autreuil, France
1931 Alice Munro (Open Secret, The Love of a Good Woman), Wingham, Ont.

DIED: 1993 Ruth Krauss (A Hole Is to Dig, The Carrot Seed), 91, Westport, Conn,
2007 Doug Marlette (Kudzu, The Bridge)j, 57, Holly Springs, Miss.

July 9

BORN: 1933 Oliver Sacks (Awakenings, Uncle Tungsten), London
1951 Larry Brown (Dirty Work, Joe, Father and Son), Oxford, Miss.
DIED: 1797 Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France), 68, Beaconsfield, England
1977 Loren Eiseley (The Immense Journey, The Firmament of Time), 69, Philadelphia

July 8

BORN: 1929 Shirley Ann Grau (The Keepers of the House), New Orleans
1952 Anna uindlen (Black and Blue, One True Thing), Philadelphia

DIED: 1822 Percy Byte Shelley (Prometheus Unbound), 29, Gulf of Spezia, Italy
1929 Havelock Ellis (Sexual Inversion, My Life), 80, Hintlesham, England

BORN: 1907 Robert A. Heinkein (Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers), Butler, Mo.
1933 David McCullough (Truman, John Adams), Pittsburgh
DIED: 1930 Arthur Conan Doyle (The Hound of the Baskervilles), 71, Crowborough, England
1999 Julie Campbell (Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion), 91, Alexandria, N.Y.

BORN: 1946 Peter Singer (Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics), Melbourne, Australia
1952 Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies), Glossop, England

DIED: 1962 William Faulkner (Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!), 64, Byhalia, Miss.
2005 Ed McBain/Evan Hunter (The Blackboard Jungle, The Mugger), 78, Weston, Conn.

July 5

BORN: 1958 Bill Waterson (Calvin and Hobbes)j, Washington, D.C.
1972 Gary Shteyngart (The Russian Debutant's Handbook), Leningrad, USSR

DIED: 1948 Georgs Bennos (Diary of a Country Priest), 60 Neuilly-sun-Seine, France
1991 Howard Nemerov (The Winter Lightening), 71, University City, Mo.

July 4

BORN: 1804 Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter, Twice-Told Tales, Salem, Mass.
1918 Eppie Lederer (Ann Landers) and Pauline Phillips (Dear Abby), Sioux City, Iowa

DIED: 1761 Samuel Richardson (Pamela, Clarissa), 71, London
1826 Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia) 83, Charlottesville, Va.

July 3

BORN: 1883 Franz Kafka (The Metamorphosis, Amerika), Prague
1937 Tom Stoppard (Arcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead), Alan, Czechoslovakia

DIED; 1904 Theodor Harzl (The Jewish State, The Old New Land), 4, Edlach, Austria
2001 Mordecai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Daddy Kravitz), 70, Montreal

July 2

BORN: 1877 Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha, Steppenwolf), Calw, Germany
1919 Jean Craighead George (My Side of the Mountain), Washington, D.C.

DIED: 1904 Anton Chekhov (The Three Sisters), 44, Badenweiler, Germany
1961 Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls), 61, Ketchum, Idaho
1977 Vladimir Nabokov (Pain, Pale Fire), 78, Montreau, Switzerland

June 30

BORN: 1665 John Gay (The Begger's Opera), Barnstaple, England
1911 Czeslaw Milosz (The Captive Mind, Collected Poems), Szetejini, Russian Empire

DIED: 1973 Nancy Mitford (The Pursuit of Love), 68, Versailles, France
2003 Robert McCloskey (Blueberries for Sal), 88, Deer Isle, Maine

June 29

BORN: 1798 Giacomo Leopardi (Canti, Zibaldone), Recanati, Italy
1900 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince, Night Flight), Lyon, France

DIED: 1861 Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese), 55, Florence, Italy
1990 Irving Wallace (The Chapman Report, The Book of Lists), Los Angeles

June 28

BORN: 1712 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Confessions, Émile), Geneva
1947 Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War), New York City

DIED: 1985 Lyne Ward (God's Man, The Biggest Bear), 80, Reston, Va.
2001 Mortimer Adler (How to Read a Book), 98, Palo Alto, Calif.

June 27

BORN: 1936 Lucille Clifton (Good Woman, Blessing the Boats), Depew, N.Y.
1953 Alice McDermott (That Night, Charming Billy), Brooklyn
DIED: 1980 Carey McWilliams (Factories in the Field), 74, New York City
2001 Tove Jansson (From Family Moominstroll, The Summer Book), 86, Helsinki

June 26

BORN: 1892 Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth, Pavilion of Women), Hillsboro, W.Va.
1969 Lev Grossman (The Magicians, The Magician King), Lexington, Mass.

DIED: 1793 Gilbert White (The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne), 72, Selborne, England
1961 Kenneth Fearing (The Big Clock, Dead Reckoning), 58 New York City

June 25

BORN: 1903 George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia, The Road to Wigan Pier), Motihari, India
1929 Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Caterpillar), Syracuse, N.Y.

DIED: 1984 Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish, Madness and Civilization), 57, Paris
1997 Jacques Cousteau (The Silent World, The Living Sea), 87, Paris

June 24

BORN: 1842 Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary), Meigs County, Ohio
1937 Anita Desai (Clear Light of Day, In Custody), Mussoorie, India
DIED: 1909 Sarah Orne Jewett (The Country of the Pointed Firs), 59, South Berwick, Maine
1969 Frank King (Gasoline Alley), 86, Winter Park, Fla.

June 23

BORN: 1894 Alfred Kinsey (Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female), Hoboken, N.J.
1961 David Leavitt (Family Dancing, The Indian Clerk), Pittsburgh

DIED: 1836 James Mill (The History of British India), 63, London
1956 Michael Arden (The Green Hat), 60, New York City