Honoré de Balzac est né à Tours le 20 mai 1799 et mort à Paris le 18 août 1850. Il a laissé l’une des plus imposantes œuvres romanesques de la littérature française, “La Comédie Humaine” où il a regroupé un ensemble de plus de quatre-vingt-dix ouvrages —… Read More “Le coeur d’une mère …” – Balzac
David “Davy” Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was an American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and three-time Congressman. He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives and took part in the Texas Revolution. During the Battle of the Alamo 49-year-old Crockett remained there as the Mexican army advanced, boosting the spirits of… Read More Davy Crockett
Herbert George Wells (1866 – 13 August 1946), usually referred to as H. G. Wells, was an English writer considered the father of modern science fiction, along with Jules Verne. His work “The Time Machine” is the first great novel to imagine time travel and can be considered both a scientific parable and a class… Read More 🛸 “We are always getting away from the present moment” (H.G. Wells) 🛸
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and engraver. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. In the prose work “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790-93), which is one… Read More “The Proverbs of Hell” (W. Blake)
“Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.” (H. Hoover) Herbert Hoover (August 10, 1874 –-1964), America’s 31st president, took office in 1929, the year the U.S. economy fell into the Great Depression. Even though his predecessors’ policies contributed to the crisis, Hoover bore much of the blame in the… Read More Herbert Hoover
“You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy books and that’s kind of the same thing.” Today August 9 is Book Lovers’ Day, an unofficial holiday that inspires people to pick up a book – or two – and spend the day reading. Studies have shown that reading is not only entertaining, but can also… Read More Book Lovers’ Day
On this day, two hundred years ago, 22-year-old John Keats (1795-1821) returned from a walking tour in the Lake Districts and Scotland with some friends, during which he had begun to show symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him within three years. It was 1818: during that year Keats’s health began to fail and… Read More 8 August 1818: Keats
Phyllis Dorothy James, known professionally as P. D. James, (3 August 1920 – 27 November 2014) was an English crime writer. She became famous for a series of detective novels whose protagonist is police commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh. According to her “What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of… Read More P. D. James
Joanne Rowling, known under the pen name J.K. Rowling, was born on 31 July 1965. She is a British author and screenwriter, famous for her Harry Potter fantasy series. The books have won multiple awards, and sold more than 500 million copies becoming the best-selling book series in history. She conceived the idea of Harry… Read More Happy Birthday J. K. Rowling
Today is a day for those who still enjoy the feel and smell of a real book. It’s Paperback Book Day: the anniversary of the day the first Penguin paperbacks were published in England in 1935. When it was introduced, the paperback book revolutionized reading (much like the e-reader has done more recently) Before that,… Read More 📚 July 30 is Paperback Book Day: let’s rejoice! 📚
