BOOKPATHS

Born on August 29th

John Locke
1632 in Wrington, Somerset, England

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset
1709 in Amiens, France

Edward Carpenter
1844 in Brighton, Sussex,, England

The Edward Carpenter Forum Website

Maurice Maeterlinck
1862 in Ghent, Belgium

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1911

Preston Sturges
1898 in Chicago, Illinois, USA

The Official Preston Sturges Website

Thom Gunn
1929 in Gravesend, Kent, England

Karen Hesse
1952 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Oamaru, New Zealand

The author’s estate invites readers to follow the “Janet Frame Trail” when visiting New Zealand.  Sites include her childhood home, an exhibit at the North Otago Museum, the Janet Frame Collection at the Oamaru Public Library, and a walking tour.  Visit the Janet Frame Estate Web Site (click on Janet Frame Tourism) for information.

World

Peter K. Austin lists the “top 10 endangered languages.”

“Each language expresses the history, culture, society and identity of the people who speak it, and each is a unique way of talking about the world. The loss of any language is a loss to both the community who use it in their daily lives, and to humankind in general. The songs, stories, words, expressions and grammatical structures of languages developed over countless generations are part of the intangible heritage of all humanity.” – from “Peter K. Austin’s Top 10 Endangered Languages,” The Guardian

Born on August 28th

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749 in Frankfurt am Main (Germany)

Goethe House and Museum

Sheridan Le Fanu
1814 in Dublin, Ireland

The Victorian Web

Leo Tolstoy
1828 in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province, Russian Empire

The Tolstoy House - Museum

Vance Palmer
1885 in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia

Liam O'Flaherty
1896 in Inishmore, Aran Islands, County Galway, Ireland

Sir John Betjeman
1906 in London, England

John Betjeman Website

Roger Tory Peterson
1908 in Jamestown, New York, USA

Publisher’s Website for Roger Tory Peterson

The Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History, Jamestown, New York

Marguerite Young
1908 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

A Website Dedicated to the Living Legacy of Marguerite Vivian Young

Robertson Davies
1913 in Thamesville, Ontario, Canada

Boris Pahor
1913 in Trieste, Italy

Tasha Tudor
1915 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Tasha Tudor and Family

Jack Vance
1916 in San Francisco, California, USA

Janet Frame
1924 in Dunedin, New Zealand

The Janet Frame Literary Trust

Allen Say
1937 in Yokohama, Japan

Rita Dove
1952 in Akron, Ohio, USA

The Rita Dove Home Page

Brian Pinkney
1961 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, Colorado, U.S.

The Tattered Cover Book Store, a book lover’s dream in Denver, welcomes the Democratic convention and the many “guest speakers visiting The Big Tent [who] have graciously agreed to sign books at the Tattered Cover.”

Born on August 27th

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1770 in Stuttgart, Württemberg (Germany)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Hegel Society of America

Amado Nervo
1870 in Tepic, Mexico

Theodore Dreiser
1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA

The International Theodore Dreiser Society

Dreiser Web Source

Lloyd C. Douglas
1877 in Columbia City, Indiana, USA

C. S. Forester
1899 in Cairo, Egypt

C. S. Forester Society

Norah Lofts
1904 in Shipham, Norfolk, England

David Rowbotham
1924 in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

David Rowbotham: a Chronicle

Ira Levin
1929 in New York, New York, USA

Antonia Fraser
1932 in London, England

Antonia Fraser Website

William Least Heat-Moon
1939 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Tom Lanoye
1958 in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium

Tom Lanoye Website

Jeanette Winterson
1959 in Manchester, England

Jeanette Winterson Website

Sicily, Italy

Howard Jacobson searches for D. H. Lawrence’s Sicily.

“One day I wander out the back of town in search of Lawrence’s old house. I am touched to find there is a Via David Herbert Lawrence. In this country he is all but forgotten, in Taormina he has his own street. And his own accommodation facility, too - a ceramic plaque proclaiming David Lawrence Bed and Breakfast. Seeing me taking photographs, a small round Italian in a red shirt tells me the bed and breakfast belongs to him and that he named it after the ‘scrittore inglese'.” – from “Sizzling Sicily Puts on a Show,” by Howard Jacobson, The Times

Soria, Spain

John Motyka visits the homeland of Antonio Machado, “one of the great lyric poets of the 20th century."

“Soria — ‘Soria fría, Soria pura’ (Cold Soria! Pure Soria), as Machado described it in a poem — is much changed since he departed in 1912 after the death of his child bride, Leonor. Yet, off the international tourist map and largely left behind by Spain’s sprawling development, the city of Soria and the province of the same name, of which it is the capital, retain a powerful sense of place.” – from “A Poet’s Realm of Myth and Reality,” by John Motyka, The New York Times

Egypt

Maya Jaggi talks with Egyptian novelist (and dentist) Alaa Al Aswany.

“Al Aswany, now 51, lives in Garden City, just south of downtown Cairo, with his wife, Iman Taymur, and their two daughters, May, 12, and Nada, 11. Speaking in a hotel beside the Nile, and later in London, he says he is unwilling to give up his clinic, despite being a rarity among Arabic novelists in being able to live from his writing (Mahfouz was a government bureaucrat). ‘Dentistry is my window on Egyptian society,' he says. 'Success can be dangerous - you get isolated. But if you block your contact with the street, you're in trouble. More than 60% of Egyptians are below the poverty line. I must keep loyal to them, or I'll lose everything.’" – from “Cairo Calling,” by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian

Born on August 26th

Zona Gale
1874 in Portage, Wisconsin, USA

John Buchan
1875 in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland

Buchanalia

John Buchan Society

Guillaume Apollinaire
1880 in Rome?, Italy

Guillaume Apollinaire Website

Jules Romains
1885 in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, France

Christopher Isherwood
1904 in Hgh Lane, Chesire, England

The Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Huntington Library Exhibition

Julio Cortázar
1914 in Brussels, Belgium

Barbara Ehrenreich
1941 in Butte, Montana, USA

Barbara Ehrenreich Website