August

Natalie Babbitt: "The first week of August is motionless and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank, white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color." 
                                                                                                                       from "Tuck Everlasting"



Celebrate the arrival of August with picnics, chilled white wine, ice cream desserts, and trips to the cool library! On the shelves are new books by Chris Bohjalian, Amy Bloom and Stephen Carter. Look for paperbacks by Louise Penny, Margaret Atwood and Edwidge Danticat.

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. I'm reading Barbara Tuchman's "Guns of August" and Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front." 


                                                   August Days

3 - Birth of P.D. James (Children of Men) in 1920.

5 - Birth of Guy de Maupassant (The Necklace) in 1850. 

7 - Garrison Keillor was born on this day in 1942. No, he wasn't born in Lake Wobegon!

9-13 - Play Scrabble Days. Check those dictionaries!

10 - Read Hunger Games in honor of Suzanne Collins' birthday. 

12 - In 1964, the world welcomed Katherine Boo (Behind the Beautiful Forevers) and said farewell to Ian Fleming (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).

14 - In 1949, Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind) died.  

18 - Bad Poetry Day. Choose your own worst poet!

10 - Ogden Nash (Candy is Dandy) was born in 1902.

17 - Freedom author Jonathan Franzen was born in 1959.

18 - Birth of Nicole Krauss (History of Love) in 1974. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes author, Anita Loos died in 1981.

22 - Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles) was born in 1920.

27 - Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie) was born in 1871. Bennett Cerf (Shake Well Before Using) died in 1971.

28 - Anna Karenina's Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828. 

30 - Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) was born in 1797.