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: Jobs. What are your favorite fiction or nonfiction books, stories, essays, plays or poems about a specific job or working in general? What jobs that you weren’t familiar with, or didn’t know the details of, did you learn about from reading?
Ideas for prompts are always appreciated!
Today’s literary birthdays:
Pieter Berman (1713), Dutch philologist and poet (RIP 1778)
Pierre Larousse (1817), French lexicographer and encyclopedist (RIP 1875)
Robert Bridges (1844), English poet, British Poet Laureate (RIP 1930)
Neltje Blanchan (1865), American scientific historian and nature writer (RIP 1918)
Simo Puupponen (AKA Aapeli) (1915), Finnish novelist (RIP 1967)
Bob Montana (1920), American comics artist, co-creator of Archie Andrews and associated characters (RIP 1975)
Gianni Rodari (1920), Italian children’s books author, Hans Christen Anderson medal winner (RIP 1980)
Aslam Farrukhi (1923), Urdu literary critic and children’s book author (RIP 2016)
Leszek Kolakowski (1927), Polish-English historian and philosopher (RIP 1979)
Shamsur Rahman (1929), Bangladeshi poet (RIP 2006)
Vasily Belov (1932), Russian novelist, playwright and poet (RIP 2012)
Douglas Dunn (1942), Scottish poet
Alicia Borinsky (1946), Argentinian poet, novelist and literary critic
Nick Tosches (1949), American biographer, novelist and poet (RIP 2019)
Taner Akçam (1953), Turkish-German historian and sociologist, known for his works on the Armenian genocide
Laurie Halse Anderson (1961), American children’s and young adult novelist
Gordon Korman (1963), Canadian children’s and young adult novelist
Augusten Burroughs (1965), American memoirist
Feel free to comment about any of these folks, and/or let us know if I missed somebody.
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!