Reading - Bram Stoker & Margaret Mitchell

What do these two authors have in common?

Bram Stoker was an Irish threatre critic who also wrote several novels, the most famous of which was Dracula, which was published in 1897. With this book, Stoker took an obscure bit of Eastern European folklore and turned into a cultural phenomenon. Without Dracula, there would have been no Interview with the Vampire, and no Twilight.

Margaret Mitchell was an American journalist who spent ten years writing one novel, Gone With the Wind, which was published in 1936. This book tells the story of a spoiled southern belle during the American Civil War, who loses everything, but finds herself. Without Gone with the Wind, there would have been no Steel Magnolias, and no Cold Mountain.

Although Stoker was born in 1847, and Mitchell was born in 1900, they share a birthday on November 8, and their works have heavily influenced modern literary and film culture.

Both Dracula and Gone with the Wind have been made into award-winning films.

Reading - Stephen Crane

On this date, November 1, 1891, American author Stephen Crane was born in Newark, NJ. Crane's best-known work is The Red Badge of Courage, a novel about an 18-year-old young man who goes off to fight for the Union Army in the Civil War. The main character, Henry Fleming, has a romanticised idea of war when he leaves home, but he as the story progresses and he is forced to confront the realities of war, and becomes a man as he faces his fears.

The Red Badge of Courage is an example of American naturalist literature. Naturalism portrays the subject as it is, rather than how we think it might be. For example, like the Fleming character dreams of becoming a war hero at the beginning of the book, but when he gets there, he actually sees the grit and violence of war, and Stephen Crane portrays this very much as if he had seen it himself, in stark detail. It is interesting to note, however, that Stephen Crane had never seen battle at the time he wrote the book. Crane chose to write the book in this manner, because he had read accounts of soldiers who had fought in the Civil War, and he found them dissatisfying because the soldiers told about what they did, but not about what they felt. Crane felt it was important to include emotion in his story so that the reader could empathize with the characters, rather than just read dry accounts about what they did.

Stephen Crane died in 1900, of tuberulosis, at the age of 28.

Tip of the Week - Reading

We're once again combining the Reading Tip of the Week with Today in History! Author Terry McMillan was born October 18, 1951. McMillan was born and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. She was a single mother living in New York in the 1980s when she attended a writer's workshop in Harlem. She went on to write several novels including Mama and Disappearing Acts. Two of her novels, Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, have been made into movies. If you haven't read anything by Terry McMillan, check out one or more of her books!

September 21, 1866

Science fiction pioneer HG Wells was born today in 1866. Wells wrote such classics as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and War of the Worlds, all of which later became classic films as well.

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles directed an narrated War of the Worlds as a radio play on the Columbia Broadcast System (CBS). The play was presented as a series of "news bulletins" and without commericial interruptions. It was intended as a spooky Halloween show. Unfortunately, many Americans had missed the beginning of the show and did not realize that it was a Halloween prank. This resulted in mass hysteria across America by people who believed that space aliens were invading the planet.