Remember Rod McKuen

I was reminded that tomorrow is the day they expect that the Nobel Prize for Literature will be revealed. Sometimes I have a keen interest in these prizes; more often I skip the excitement. I don’t think it’s because I disagree with the selection committee (I often do) but more that I find awards ceremonies of questionable value. Hey, I don’t even follow the Academy Awards, the NFL standings, or the Jersey tomato weigh-off.

But there was an interesting twist in the presumed front-runners this year.

France is well represented by Annie Ernaux; Jamaica Kincaid and Maryse Condé are both black women writers from the Caribbean; Jon Fosse, a Norwegian, is a prolific playwright that may be too cerebral for Broadway; Dubravka Ugresic represents the often favored literature of Eastern Europe; the Somali writer, Nuruddin Farah, once again is a contender; and the United States puts it’s best and brightest forward with Stephen King.

Stephen King?

See why it’s easy for me to ignore these literary contests?

Last month I suggested a few new titles that might make interesting reading. I even read a few myself. How many have you read?

09-01-21 – Upside Down: Inverted Tropes In Storytelling — Jaym Gates
09-02-21 – A Children’s Bible — Lydia Millet
09-03-21 – The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel — William Goldbloom Bloch
09-04-21 – An Inventory of Losses — Judith Schalansky
09-05-21 – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — Betty Smith
09-06-21 – The Sun Collective — Charles Baxter
09-07-21 – Dissipatio H. G. — Guido Morselli
09-08-21 – Every Day is for the Thief — Teju Cole
09-09-21 – L. A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City — John Buntin
09-10-21 – The Woman Next Door — Yewande Omotoso
09-11-21 – Not the End of the World — Christopher Brookmyre
09-12-21 – The Committed: A Novel — Viet Thanh Nguyen
09-13-21 – The Door — Magda Szabo
09-14-21 – The Last Great Road Bum Héctor Tobar — Jonathan Lethem
09-15-21 – Berta Isla — Javier Marías
09-16-21 – Ghost Town — Robert Coover
09-17-21 – Miss Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure — Ann M. Martin
09-18-21 – American Gothic Tales — Joyce Carol Oates, ed.
09-19-21 – Valentine — Brit Bennett
09-20-21 – The Glass Hotel — Emily St. John Mandel
09-21-21 – The Elements of Active Prose — Tahlia Newland
09-22-21 – Rest and Be Thankful — Emma Glass
09-23-21 – The Pornographers — Akiyuki Nozaka
09-24-21 – Just Kids From the Bronx — Arlene Alda
09-25-21 – Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession — Sarah Weinman
09-26-21 – Leave the World Behind — Rumaan Alam
09-27-21 – The End: My Struggle Book 6 — Karl Ove Knausgârd
09-28-21 – Cleanness — Garth Greenwell
09-29-21 – Madam Bovary’s Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature — David P. Barash & Nanelle Rose Barash
09-30-21 – 1177 B. C., The Year Civilization Collapsed — Eric H. Cline

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Note: Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah wins Nobel Prize for literature for 2021.