Monday, March 29, 2010

Tuesday Trivia

  1. In 2004, which world-renowned author’s daughter discovered a 5,000-word story entitled "The Incident of the Dog's Ball" in the attic of her home?
  2. Which young adult writer is the brother of the man who invented the sole of Sperry Top-Sider shoes?
  3. Which American fiction writer began his writing career while working as a pencil sharpener wholesaler in 1911?
  4. Which young adult author did not begin writing children’s literature until the age of 47?
  5. Under nom de plume Ashley Cooper, which American author wrote a long-running column for the Charleston Post Courier until 1993?


Ernest Hemingway, named after his mother’s father, disliked his given name. What was his reasoning?



According to Hemingway, he didn’t want to be "associated with the naive, even foolish hero of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest".


The American band Kansas had a song entitled "Journey to Mariabronn" a reference to which German novel?


Journey to Mariabronn was based on Herman Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund.



Which author was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature?



In 1926, Sinclair H. Lewis refused the Pulitzer Prize for his book, 'Arrowsmith,' but in 1930 he became the first American to be named a Nobel Laureate in literature, which he accepted.


“The Short Timers” by Gustav Hasford was the basis for which Vietnam War move?



“The Short Timers” was the basis of “Full Metal Jacket.” Similarly the movie “Platoon” was based on a script by Michael Herr and “Apocalypse Now” was loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.


Who coined the term “The Lost Generation”?


In a conversation with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein said "All of you young people who served in the war...you are all a lost generation". The phrase usually depicts a generation of young men and women where are characterized by doomed youth, hedonism and creativity, that had been severely wounded by their experiences and horrors of the war.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Former PH Intern Kyle Price and the Mickey Yeti


On a recent trip to Orlando, Florida, Prestwick House Art Director Larry Knox met up with one of our former graphic design interns, Kyle Price, to catch up on how things have been going for the young designer since leaving our
company–and things are going quite well.



Kyle interned at Prestwick House during the spring of 2006, tackling book covers, logos and text design with a high level of skill and a great deal of enthusiasm. Graduating from Wilmington University, he set out to pursue his long-held dream of working as a graphic designer for the Walt Disney Company. Kyle applied during the time he interned for us, and he was accepted into the coveted Disney intern program and moved to Orlando to begin his six month position as a graphic designer.


Due to his talent and very strong work ethic, he was asked to stay on for another term as intern and soon after, was offered a full-time position with the merchandise design division of the Theme Parks for the entertainment giant. Kyle has since applied for and was hired as a designer on the historic and elite Walt Disney Imagineering Team (also known as WDI or simply Imagineering) –the design and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation and construction of Disney theme parks worldwide.


Kyle has worked on a number of major projects including the recent redesign of the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando.

While in the Merchandise design division, he was asked to lend his creative illustrating skills to a new line of collectible, limited-time-only vinyl characters. Not only was his design accepted, but he also created the packaging and the logo. His Mickey Yeti was a huge hit with collectors and for a time, was the top selling figure in the line.

At present, it is actively sought after by Disney collectors online. Disney recently released 8-inch Vinylmation Plush versions of the top sellers in the line, including Kyle's. Kyle thanked Larry for the opportunity Prestwick House gave him on his way to becoming an Imagineer and presented him with one of these highly desired collectibles.

The Imagineers work on a principle known as “blue sky,” a process where they generate ideas with no limitations — the sky’s the limit, very appropriate for this talented young man at the beginning of his career.

Great job Kyle! Best of luck in the future. We can honestly say we knew you when...

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Editor's note: you can see more of Kyle's work at www.kyleprice.com

Celebrate National Poetry Month in Your State!

For great ideas on celebrating National Poetry Month in your area, visit Poets.org and click on your state for more information!


Thursday, March 25, 2010

Happy Tolkien Reading Day!

According to SciTechBlogs:



Every year since 2003, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic tales have gathered on March 25 for meetups at local libraries, schools, universities and elsewhere to celebrate the works of one of the original geek icons.



March 25 is the date that Sauron, the evil overlord, is overthrown in Tolkien's "Return of the King."



It all started when the Tolkien Society, a group dedicated to the "Lord of the Rings" author, were approached by a journalist who asked why there was no day of celebration for Tolkien to match the one for James Joyce.



Thus, Tolkien Reading Day was born.



Each year, there is a different theme for the day (this year it's "Tolkien's Seafarers"). Fans - encouraged to attend in costume, of course - read aloud some of their favorite sections for about ten minutes or less, and participate in "musical interludes." Some people even bring recordings of Tolkien himself giving a reading.



Since the final Oscar-winning film of the "Lord of the Rings" series was released, Tolkien Reading Day has been the main event to bring Tolkien fans back to basics.



One of the most popular forums at Tolkien fansite TheOneRing.net, is "The Reading Room."



Patricia Dawson, a senior staff member with the site, said that the original purpose of the site 11 years ago was to post the latest news about Peter Jackson's films (Jackson, and subsquently, Guillermo Del Toro, have a close relationship with the site). Since then, she said, the site, with its 4,500 message board members, has been even more "grounded in (Tolkien's) works and readings." The aforementioned "Reading Room" is a place for scholarly discussion.



Fans, young and old, flock to Tolkien Reading Day, according to Dawson. Some of them were fans long before the idea of having an online community first came about.



Young children, she said, "do some of the best readings I’ve ever seen." She has even heard of 24-hour reading marathons taking place.



To be sure, the long-awaited "Hobbit" movie is still a big topic among fans online. Del Toro keeps TheOneRing.net visitors aware of the latest developments, including recent "enquires from above" about releasing it in 3-D, in the aftermath of "Avatar."



Until "The Hobbit" hits theaters, however, fans will continue to pay tribute every year to the man who first wrote that book over 70 years ago.



If you stop by your local library today, you might just be get the opportunity to join them.


Is "Hey" the New "Hi?"


Is HEY the new HI? Most adults do not hey someone because their mother, grandmother, or teacher corrected them if they said hey, saying “hey is rude” or “hay is for horses.” It used to be that addressing someone as "Hey, you" was an insult. Then in the late 90s, hey replaced ‘sup (meaning what’s up) in teenage slang. Hey as a greeting also showed up in 90s sitcoms like Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City. Linguists tell us that when slang makes its way into the mainstream, it does one of two things. The new word or usage is either accepted widely into common usage, or it disappears altogether.

If hey replaces hi, it won’t be the first time that Americans have switched overnight to a new greeting. Just 150 years ago, Americans used "Good morning," "Good afternoon," "Good evening." "Good day" and "Good night" were typically used as parting phrases, not as greetings. Technology caused masses of Americans to switch to "hello" in a short period of time. Back in 1840, the English used "hallo" to mean “look out," or "watch out.” The words "holla" or "hollo
," a shout to attract attention go back to 1588, and are probably from "hola" (Spanish), "haloo" (Thai), "allo" (Russian), "hallo" (German). The English word morphed into hello with the invention of the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell wanted people to answer the phone with "ahoy," but Thomas A. Edison won out with "hello." Early telephone operators were even known as "hello-girls."

Hi became popular in the Roaring Twenties. Americans embraced new art, new music, new inventions, new fashion, and new slang. Hello remained the standard for telephone etiquette, but Americans, borrowing from jazz lyrics, began to hi each other. By the 1940s hi, and in some regions hiya, had replaced hello as the American salutation. According to Etymology Online hi is attributed to a Kansas Native American in 1862. Did he really mean "how," a Sioux greeting that dates back to 1817?

Hey is a much older English word (1225) meaning “look out” or “watch out,” probably borrowed from "eho" (Roman), "eia" (Greek), or "hei" (German). Again, musical lyrics from Fats Waller (Hey, hey, hey, yes, yes!) and Lionel Hampton (Hey Baba Ree Bop) show that hey was floating around in the jazz and blues culture before it became a greeting. The youth culture seized on hey in the 50s and 60s in song lyrics ("Hey, Baby," "Hey, Paula," "He
y, Jude") and as the counter-culture greeting "Hey, Man!" Two people -- a woman at a wedding and my plumber -- both greeted me recently with "Hey, Girl!" I don’t know if that’s a feminist issue or the case of someone not remembering my name.

I won't be saying hey, but I’m not so keen on hi or hello either. I wish we said Namaste (Hindu: My soul salutes the God within you), or Tashi Delay (Tibetan: Congratulations, you are alive!). Maybe the Australians, Israelis, and Hawaiians have the best idea, one word that means both hello and goodbye . . . G’day! Shalom! Aloha!


Image from Getty Images

---

Mary Jane McKinney is the creator and owner of Grammardog.com LLC, publisher of grammar, style, and proofreading exercises that use sentences from literature.

She is a former high school English teacher and dedicated grammarian whose column Plain English appears in several Texas newspapers.
Grammardog.com LLC, P.O. Box
299, Christoval, TX 76935, www.grammardog.com, 325-896-2479.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Evolution of Several Classic Stories

This afternoon, Keith passed along this very cool infographic from Lapham's Quarterly that you might like to share with your students. It details the evolution of four of the world's most classic stories: Pygmalion, Oedipus, Faust, and Leviathan.

Click on the image below to see the whole story map.


Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Tuesday Trivia

  1. Ernest Hemingway, named after his mother’s father, disliked his given name. What was his reasoning?
  2. The American band Kansas had a song entitled "Journey to Mariabronn," a reference to which German novel?
  3. Which author was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature?
  4. “The Short Timers” by Gustav Hasford was the basis for which Vietnam War move?
  5. Who coined the term “The Lost Generation”?



Which playwright is the first person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar?

George Bernard Shaw was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 and an Oscar in 1938. Because he lacked a desire to be acknowledged with public honors, Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize but accepted it at his wife's request.


Which young adult author is the grandmother of controversial musician Courtney Love?



Paula Fox, author of Slave Dancer, had a daughter named Linda in 1944 that she put up for adoption. Linda Carroll, the adopted child, is the mother of controversial musician Courtney Love; making Fox Courtney Love's grandmother.




Who wrote the play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window – a work that ran for 110 performances on Broadway and closed the same night its famous author died?


Lorraine Hansberry died on January 12, 1965 at the age of 34 after a long battle with cancer.


As a student at the University of Nebraska in the early 1890s, which female author used the nickname William and dressed as a boy?


Willa Cather can be seen in photographs from the University of Nebraska archives wearing young men’s clothing and sporting an extremely short haircut.


Although she claimed as an adult that she was born in Eatonville, Florida in 1901, which author was actually born in Notasulga, Alabama in 1891?


Zora Neale Hurston



Monday, March 15, 2010

Tuesday Trivia

  1. Which playwright is the first person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar?
  2. Which young adult author is the grandmother of controversial musician Courtney Love?
  3. Who wrote the play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window – a work that ran for 110 performances on Broadway and closed the same night its famous author died?
  4. As a student at the University of Nebraska in the early 1890s, which female author used the nickname William and dressed as a boy?
  5. Although she claimed as an adult that she was born in Eatonville, Florida in 1901, which author was actually born in Notasulga, Alabama in 1891?



Which American author was the son of astrologer, William Chaney, and his wife Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist who claimed the ability to channel the spirit of an Indian chief?



Jack London



Which Young Adult author moved 13 times between 1937 and 1950 due to her parents’ missionary work?



Katherine Paterson



Which young adult author received $4.67 for her first story called “Mike’s Hero,” which was published in a church magazine in 1949?



Phyllis Reynolds Naylor



What was E.B. White’s nickname at Cornell?



E.B. White was called "Andy" at Cornell, a nickname that any male student with the last name “White” was called in honor of Cornell co-founder Andrew Dickson White.



Which satiric author suffered from an illness characterized by vertigo and fits of giddiness — now known to be Ménière's disease, a disorder of the inner ear?



Jonathan Swift



Friday, March 12, 2010

A Report From the Front Lines

I’ve just returned from the front lines and have this report. Once a year I go back to the classroom to stay in touch with what’s going on in high school English classes. The large high school in West Texas where I used to teach brings me in to coach students who have never passed the state essay. If they don’t pass, they won’t graduate. Here are some of my observations:



Texting Lingo. I noticed a decrease in abbreviations and shortened words in students’ writing. Teachers have been vigilant in trying to stamp out the use of b/c for because and 2 instead of two, to, and too. Whatever teachers are doing to emphasize the use of whole words and phrases in formal writing is working.



Slang. Trying to ban the use of everyday language in formal writing is a constant struggle for English teachers. Many students simply don’t know what the formal word is. If white middle class teenagers in West Texas are discarding the word friend in favor of homey or home boyz, I can only imagine what other slang has driven out formal language in the rest of the country.



Punctuation. Here’s where the influence of texting and tweeting is the most powerful. Students have lost the habit of using periods, question marks, and quotation marks. The comma, semicolon, and colon have been disappearing for years in student writing. I’m afraid it’s the last stand for end marks and the English teachers must win the war.



Capitalization. The good news is that students capitalized “I.” That is progress over past years. Texting and tweeting are the enemies, but I can see that English teachers are countering the attack and gaining ground. The next battle strategy is to add proper names and foreign languages to the list of capitalized words. Most of the students did not capitalize the names of their friends, but they did use upper case letters on the names of retailers like Old Navy and Burger King. Advertising pays off – they all nailed the tricky capitalization in Wal-Mart.



Spelling. I was shocked at how well the students spelled. Some shift in emphasis must have occurred in elementary schools. Several of the students were mediocre writers but excellent spellers. Two students told me that they learned to spell in Mexico in their English class. Come to think of it I am a pretty good speller in Spanish.



Handwriting. Again, texting, tweeting, and computers have a huge influence here. The good news is that most students print which makes their writing more legible. The few who write in cursive may as well be writing in a foreign language. Their scrawling defies deciphering. This is especially disturbing if the student writes well, but has illegible handwriting.



Grammar. Correct use of pronouns and irregular verb tenses really took a hit on the essays I read. Examples of incorrect usage included: “me and my cousin went to the mall,” “he gave presents to my sister and I,” “the bell had rang,” “I had ran all over town,” and “we drinked our Cokes.” The good news is that teachers seemed to have annihilated the use of “he don’t,” a phenomenal accomplishment. If "he don’t" can be corrected, anything is possible. I often think that English teachers can learn from the programs that teach foreign language. Conjugation drills may be philosophically incorrect in today’s classroom, but drills via computer programs might be successful. Anybody out there interested in applying for a grant to experiment with the English version of Rosetta Stone?




I return to the front lines tomorrow for another three-day stint. As usual, the teacher learns as much from the students as they learn from her.


---

Mary Jane McKinney is the creator and owner of Grammardog.com LLC, publisher of grammar, style, and proofreading exercises that use sentences from literature.

She is a former high school English teacher and dedicated grammarian whose column Plain English appears in several Texas newspapers.
Grammardog.com LLC, P.O. Box 299, Christoval, TX 76935, www.grammardog.com, 325-896-2479.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

In Defense of Radical Revision: Killing Witches

by Douglas Grudzina


I killed a German witch last week.

Well, she wasn’t so much German as Pennsylvania Dutch, and she wasn’t so much a witch as a creepy crone accused of witchcraft, and I didn’t kill her so much as I simply rewrote her into never having existed.

She was a character in a novel I’m writing.

She’s not anymore.


In cutting her, I had to revise over a dozen scenes, change pronouns, find new actors to perform key actions, omit other actions altogether, alter a few characters’ motivations … It was a much more involved process than merely doing a Find-and-Delete on her name.



But I think it will be a better novel for her not being in it. Those who have read both versions agree.


The episode of the German witch, I think, is an apt illustration of the concept of revision—not only in fiction, but in our and our students’ personal and academic writing as well. Most of us call ourselves “process writers,” and we call what we teach our students “process writing.” No matter how many stages we divide our process into, and no matter what we call them, “revising” is always one of the latter steps.


Quite often it’s the step that’s supposed to happen after “peer conferencing” or “peer editing.” Sometimes it’s the step that’s supposed to occur after the teacher has collected and read (maybe even graded) the “rough draft.”


The result is supposed to be the “final draft.”



Now, I have a real problem with grading any preliminary draft, but that’s another argument for another post.


Today, let’s talk about what we mean by “revision.” What do we expect our students to do when we tell them to “revise,” and what do we expect to see happen to the piece of writing between the first and the second and the third … and the final drafts? All too often, I’m afraid, we do not encourage—or even allow—our students to kill their German witches.


When I was in elementary school (okay, today it would be considered middle school, but I was in a K-8 building), our “writing process’ involved writing our essays in pencil on yellow paper. (This was the late 1960s; the “number 2” pencil was high tech, and use of the ballpoint pen was still controversial.) At some point, after cleaning up the spelling and punctuation, we were doled out sheets of white paper and given permission to copy the essay in ink.


That was our final draft.



Only one time in my elementary schooling do I remember actually being required to rewrite as opposed to merely recopying. It was either seventh or eighth grade, and my descriptive paragraph opened with a string of stylistic sentence fragments. I remember rewriting the paragraph at least three times until I got rid of all the fragments. Whether I agree that the fragments were poetic license or bad grammar, at least in that one instance, I was required to do some revision.



Copying an essay from yellow paper to white is not revision. Copying an essay from pencil into ink is not revision; neither is running the computer’s grammar and spell check and then hitting the PRINT command. It’s not revision unless you kill the German witch


It saddens and frustrates me that I still hear elementary and middle school teachers referring to their students’ first drafts as their “sloppy copy.” Now, I don’t mind the rhyme. I like alliteration, consonance, and onomatopoeia, too, but a draft and a copy are vastly different things, and revision is a much more radical step than merely recopying.


It’s more than proofreading, too.


Here are a few ideas to illustrate to your students the extent of revision and get them to practice it. Make sure you let your students know that these activities are exercises so they don’t get frustrated, thinking you’re yanking their chain or something.


FIRST: Give them a thesis. Give them two simple sources: two timelines, charts, pictures, whatever—and have them write a brief essay in which they use information from both sources to support, refute, or qualify that thesis.*


After they “finish” the essay, give them a third source. Tell them they must now rewrite their essay and include evidence from this third source. If this new source requires them to revisit their thesis, so be it.


Of course, the new essay, must not be awkward with data from the third source simply tacked onto the end of the essay or the ends of paragraphs. It must read like a final, polished piece with material from the new source woven seamlessly in

That’s revision.


SECOND: Give them a second thesis. Give them THREE simple sources and have them write a brief essay in which they use information from all of the sources to support, refute, or qualify that thesis.*


After they “finish” the essay, tell them they must now rewrite their essay and cut every reference to one of the three sources. If they must revisit their thesis, so be it. Of course, the new essay, must not be awkward with obvious gaps and omissions. It must read like a final, polished piece with all evidence of the deleted third source eradicated.


That’s revision.


* There’s no reason, of course, that the theses you give your students can’t pertain to what you’re actually covering in class, and the sources can’t contain information you want the kids to learn. These revision activities should not be “tacked on” any more than any writing assignment should be “tacked on.”


Variations of these two activities can include:


  1. Have the students cut their essays by half (real-life editors often require their writers to shorten their pieces—cut out extraneous material, fit the article to the space allowed, make the book more sellable …).
  2. Have the students increase their essays by a quarter. (This sometimes also happens, but rarely. Dickens’s books are not as long as they were because he was being paid by the word and he padded them!) If you do this activity, tell them the increase in word count must be substantive.
  3. Add the third source but do not allow the students to increase their word or page count. This will require them to cut as well as add.



I do miss my German witch. She was kind of a cool old lady, and her role in the climax of the story would have been a nifty surprise for the reader. But she was also a drag on some of the other characters, there was no real motivation for her to do the things she did, and there was nothing she did that couldn’t be done by other characters more intrinsic to the central plot.


So I had to kill her.


If your students still believe that the revision stage is when they make sure all their quotation marks are curled in the right direction, and they’ve spelled there, their, and they’re correctly, they need to be shown how much better their writing can be if they kill their witches too.


Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Tuesday Trivia

  1. Which American author was the son of astrologer, William Chaney, and his wife Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist who claimed the ability to channel the spirit of an Indian chief?
  2. Which young adult author moved 13 times between 1937 and 1950 due to her parents’ missionary work?
  3. Which young adult author received $4.67 for her first story called “Mike’s Hero,” which was published in a church magazine in 1949?
  4. What was E.B. White’s nickname at Cornell?
  5. Which satiric author suffered from an illness characterized by vertigo and fits of giddiness — now known to be Ménière's disease, a disorder of the inner ear?



Dora Diamant, lover to one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early 20th century, ignored his wishes to have all of his works burned, secretly keeping approximately 20 notebooks and 35 letters until they were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933. Who was the writer?




Dora Diamant was the lover of Franz Kafka, and an ongoing international search is being conducted for these missing Kafka papers.




Which well-known, contemporary clothing company appears in Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in its original form — as an elite sporting goods store?



Founded in 1892, Abercrombie and Fitch specialized in excursion and sporting goods and was a favorite brand of author John Steinbeck. Other patrons of A&F include Teddy Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, John F. Kennedy, and Ernest Hemingway.




Which American author had a schizophrenic sister named Rose who was treated for her mental illness with a prefrontal lobotomy?




Tennessee Williams was devastated by his sister’s surgery, unsuccessful to the point of incapacitating the girl for the remainder of her life. According to some sources, Rose’s surgery may have contributed to Williams’ dependence on prescription drugs and alcohol.




Which gothic writer was better known during his lifetime as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London?




Bram Stoker




As a teenager, which author enjoyed reading Icelandic sagas and Norse mythology — which can be seen in the style of his later works?




C. S. Lewis




Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Teacher Video Challenge from AEP

According to the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) website:






The annual conference of the Association of Educational Publishers wants to hear from you – the actual educator – about what’s working, not working and needed when it comes to using digital resources and technology in the classroom.



To kick off our first Content in Context event, we’ll highlight 20 teacher-created videos to bring your message directly to our members. We call it our Teacher Video Challenge: Classrooms in the Digital Age.



Tell us what’s on your mind. Just create a two-minute video that gives us your perspective on these three questions:



  • What are you most in need of in order to teach effectively in the digital age?

  • What one request would you make of those who create instructional materials to make them digital-classroom friendly?

  • How would better digital technology and content in the classroom help you and your students?


Answer them any way you want in a video, upload it, and let educational resource creators learn from you. We’ll pick 20 of the videos to highlight in the conference's opening general session, From the Field.


Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Steinbeck's Rediscovery of America: 50 Years Later

February 27th is the birthday of John Steinbeck, which while special in itself, is given extra significance this year since it coincides with the 50th Anniversary of Steinbeck’s cross-country trip with his standard poodle, Charley.


Steinbeck is primarily remembered for his novels, such as The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and The Pearl, but he also wrote a lesser-known travelogue entitled Travels with Charley: In Search of America. At the age of 62, Steinbeck decided to tour the country, which he had so often written about but hadn’t seen. He knew that he was dying of heart disease, and if he didn’t take the trip then, it was unlikely he would have a second opportunity. Thus, a few weeks after Labor Day in 1960, Steinbeck and Charley began their journey in their truck and custom-made camper, which was named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse.

They left by ferry from Steinbeck’s home in Sag Harbor and traveled to Connecticut. From there, they went as far north as Bangor, Maine; as far west as the Salinas Valley, California; and as far south as New Orleans before returning home to Long Island. In the book, Steinbeck frequently comments on the changes in American culture due to advances in technology and in the mass media, the differences of values and attitudes between people of different states, and the transformation of the West since the population began to grow rapidly.



Be sure to check out the Teacher’s Pet products for this great title in addition to those for Steinbeck’s other excellent works.

Trivia Tuesday

  1. Dora Diamant, lover to one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early 20th century, ignored his wishes to have all of his works burned, secretly keeping approximately 20 notebooks and 35 letters until they were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933. Who was the writer?
  2. Which well-known, contemporary clothing company appears in Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in its original form — as an elite sporting goods store?
  3. Which American author had a schizophrenic sister named Rose who was treated for her mental illness with a pre-frontal lobotomy?
  4. Which gothic writer was better known during his lifetime as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London?
  5. As a teenager, which author enjoyed reading Icelandic sagas and Norse mythology — which can be seen in the style of his later works?


Which book gets its title from a nursery rhyme that begins, "Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn…”?


Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest"




What is the title of Shakespeare’s lost play?


The play Cardenio that has been credited to the Bard and which was performed in his life, has been completely lost to time. Today we have no written record of its story whatsoever.




Which Greek writer was described by contemporaries as, “of loathsome aspect...potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous monstrosity?"


Aesop



'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is a coin phrased by which author?


Alfred Lord Tennyson




Which French author was shot in the leg and left with a permanent limp by his nephew, a young man who suffered from paranoia?



On 9 March 1886, as Jules Verne approached his own home, his twenty-five-year-old nephew Gaston, who suffered from paranoia, shot twice at him with a gun. One bullet missed, but the second entered Verne's left leg, giving him a permanent limp. Gaston spent the rest of his life in an asylum.