Welcome to the Book Nook! The weekly thread for all book nerds on The Avocado. This is the place to talk about books you’re currently reading, discuss genres, ask for recommendations, and post serious literary criticism.

This week’s prompt: What are your thoughts on biographies? If you’re a fan, what are some of the best (or worst) that you have read? What makes a biography good or bad in your opinion? Please hold off on discussing autobiographies and memoirs, we’ll tackle those next week.

Ideas for prompts are always welcome!

Today’s literary birthdays (all info courtesy of Wikipedia):
Raymond Chandler (1888), American short story writer, novelist and screenwriter (RIP 1959)
Julia Davis Adams (1900), American novelist, playwright and journalist (RIP 1993)
Inger Margrethe Boberg (try saying that three times fast, 1900), Danish folklore researcher and writer (RIP 1959)
M. H. Abrams (1912), American literary critic and editor, most notably of The Norton Anthology of English Literature (RIP 2015)
Virgil Finlay (1914), American science fiction, fantasy and and horror illustrator, known for his work in pulp magazines (RIP 1971)
Gavin Lambert (1924) British-American screenwriter, short story writer, novelist and biographer, he mostly wrote about the film industry (RIP (2005)
Alain Decaux (1925) French historian and writer (RIP (2016)
Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928), American novelist, his controversial novel Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned in Italy and was the subject of a court battle in the UK (RIP 2004)
Danielle Collobert (1940), French poet and journalist (RIP 1978)
John Nichols (1940), American novelist and nonfiction writer (RIP 2023)
Gardner Dozois (1947), American science fiction writer and editor (RIP 2018)
Thea Dorn (1970), German novelist and playwright
Lauren Groff (1978), American novelist and short story writer
Feel free to comment about any of these folks, and/or let us know if I missed somebody.

Illustration by Virgil Finlay, 1954

Posting pictures is fine as long as they are book related, but I would like this thread to continue to be a NO GIF/YouTube/social media embed zone as much as possible. Thanks, and happy commenting!