Accursed April 23?

William Shakespeare showed up on the great stage of fools on April 23, 1564 and exited stage left on April 23, 1606. An interesting article in The Guardian wonders whether there may be some sinister coincidence surrounding this day.

Here are the other folks, wordsmiths all, who exited stage left on April 23 of various years:

Cervantes

Henry Vaughn

Harold Arlen (lyricist of such favorites as Let's Fall in Love and Stormy Weather)

William Wordsworth
Rupert Brooke

Batten down the hatches, O literary ones. Today could be a mess. For more rumination on the subject, go here.

Book Meme - Couldn't Resist

1.What author do you own the most books by?
Hard to say. Shakespeare comes to mind, but I have a huge F.Scott Fitzgerald section, though not all the books are BY him. I have several about him and his work.

2. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
This is boring, but choose your Austen hero.

3.What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children)?
The Great Gatsby and 1984 are a close tie.

4.What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz. It comes out this month, and do yourselves a favor, read the Princeton website about the admission process before you wade into this mess.

5. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Disquiet by Julia Leigh. Stunning.

6.If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
There are so many! Anna Karenina, The Great Gatsby, 1985, Fahrenheit 451, Pride and Prejudice...

7.Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Margaret Atwood

8.Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 15 and dreamed about it for months afterwards. I was actually in the village with the industrial titans. It was exciting.

9.What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I'm expecting Ulysses to be quite difficult, which is probably why I haven't delved into it yet.

10.What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
I'm lame: The Taming of the Shrew.

11. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
The Russians. There's no contest.

12. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare.

13. Austen or Eliot?
Very tough. Actually can't make a decision on that. They're both brilliant in such different ways.

14. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
(Gasp.) Haven't read Hamlet. I know this is PROFOUNDLY embarassing. I should rectify this soon, perhaps tonight.

15. What is your favorite novel?
The Great Gatsby. It's perfect.

16.Play?
Not big into plays, actually; too much dialogue, which is the very nature of plays, but I love Shakespeare. The Tempest and King Lear rank at the top.

17.Poem?
"The Lady of Shalott" by Tennyson.

18.Essay?
Hateful Things by Shei Shonagun (always makes me giggle; human nature never changes)

19.Short story?
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant

20.Work of nonfiction?
84 Charing Cross Road

21. Who is your favorite writer?
F.Scott Fitzgerald

22Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Take your pick. Everyone thinks they're a writer in the grand tradition. Plus, the MFAs are sapping orignality. If I have to read one more book about the angst of some over-privileged female.....

23. What is your desert island book?
I HATE this question. Why must there be only one? How about this: I'll take Shakespeare's collected works, Austen's collected works, Wilkie Collins' collected works, and The Great Gatsby. Then! I'll have Amazon ship me books. They ship international. Hey, if I have enough time and presence of mind to collect reading for a desert island, I have enough time to set up ship list on Amazon. (See, I've thought about this.)

24. And… what are you reading right now?
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kate Grenville's Secret River, James Woods' How Fiction Works

Pulitzers Large and Small

So. Elizabeth Strout, among other luminaries, walked away with the highest literary prize in the U.S. yesterday at 3pm. Whenever prizes of this magnitude are announced, it's only natural that people would wonder about the literary giants that marched before. However, not all have retained giant status.

Abe Books does us a favor by listing the Top 10 Forgotten Pulitzers. I had only heard of one - Lamb in his Bosom, a little-known novel about life in the south that preceeded Margaret Mitchell's win a few years later with her powerhouse bestseller Gone With the Wind. Mitchell counted Lamb in his Bosom among her favorite books.

Find out about the rest.