Lisa’s Reviews > A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year > Status Update

Hey, Julia Child published Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol 1 on Oct 16 1961, and when I was given a copy some 15 years later, it changed the way I would cook forever.

The Modern World - done. Existentialism, absurdism, Popper etc but my fave is Theodor Adorno because we agree about the pernicious effects of popular culture. Oh, and Simone de B, of course!

I'm ahead of myself, up to the end of September...
September 13th was the day Heinrich Mann and Franz Werfel and their wives Nelly and Alma escaped the Nazis through the unoccupied port of Marseilles. In the same month, Walter Benjamin left it too late.

Did you know that Ben Jonson was imprisoned without a hearing because he made fun of the Scots in Eastward Ho? I must read it, there are signs abroad that the Scots are taking themselves very seriously at the moment. It's the kilts, I think, that make it difficult for non-Scots to do the same...

Well, well, I have something in common with Van Gogh - he was a keen reader, and he loved Zola as I do:)

Interested to see that on July 5 1814 Thomas Jefferson wrote scornfully about Plato's Republic. I think more people are reading Plato today than Jefferson!

Ah ha! The first really interesting discovery: 26 June 1948 was the day that The Lottery by Shirley Jackson was published, its critique of conformity causing national dismay, on the same day that the Berlin Airlift began. I watched the short film of this story on You Tube, along with a beaut analysis of it from Six Minute Scholar!

Here we are celebrating the winter solstice in Australia and this author has no idea that the southern hemisphere exists. Hello, Nissley, it's not summer everywhere you know!