We now share a few lists with ye.
David Martin of Niagara Falls, New York, chimed in with his picks. Mr. Martin, perhaps wisely, took a different approach and sent in his top eight favorite authors. They are listed in order of importance as follows:
1. Arthur Conan Doyle
2. C.S. Forester
3. Douglas Reeman
4. Frederick E. Smith
5. John le Carre
6. Alistair MacLean
7. Ian Fleming
8. John Jakes
And Wilma Daane of Denver, Colorado, sent in nonfiction favorites:
Markings by Dag Hammarskjold
Touch the Earth, edited by McLuhan
Finding My Father by Tom Robbins
Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
On the Road by Charles Kuralt
The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber
Deliver us from Evil by Tom Dooley
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Way to Rainy Mountain by F. Scott Momaday
Riding the Red Rooster by Paul Theroux
Black Like Me by John Griffin
The answer to your (ever-so-clairvoyant) question is yes, yes, and yes!Words That Make America Great: Nearly 200 Timeless Documents That Define the American Character from the Nation's Beginnings to Today by Jerome B. Agel, published last November, does indeed contain all of the documents you cite and many, many more -- from "The Iroquois Federation Constitution" (c. 1570) to "Hillary Rodham Clinton in Beijing" (1995). So as not to be "subject to indecency enforcement action," we'll let you read the excerpt from Carlin's transcript from his 1973 comedy skit "Filthy Words" rather than reprint it here.
Houghton Mifflin will publish Spark's Reality & Dreams in May. In this, her twentieth novel, Spark tells the story of film director Tom Richards, who, while directing his latest movie, falls off a crane and into a series of comic, and sometimes violent, maelstrom of events.
Playwright Jim Grimsley attracted a lot of warm attention for his first novel Winter Birds, a spare, sometimes harrowing coming-of-age story which was a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist as well as winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for fiction from the American Academy of Arts.
He has since been busy writing more novels. Elisabeth Scharlatt, Jim Grimsley's editor and publisher of Algonquin, replies, "The real question is whether Comfort and Joy is in fact the sequel to Winter Birds. Algonquin and the author consider My Drowning a significant link to Winter Birds. For one thing, the central character in My Drowning is Ellen Tote, the mother in Winter Birds (who is, interestingly, based on Jim's own mother.)
"Comfort and Joy, an early Jim Grimsley novel, was published in Europe, but the writer wanted his next book in this country to be My Drowning. Maybe the earlier book will appear one of these days, but, in the meantime, hooray for anything from Grimsley."
"There will be more books about Richard Sharpe. I recently had a note from Mr. Cornwell, and his next book will be Sharpe's Tiger. Like Forester and the Hornblower books, Cornwell is going back in time to Sharpe's early army days in India."As of now, he has no American publisher, so maybe Sharpe fans would like to write to the current American publisher!
"Also, please note that Sharpe fights in the Peninsular War, not the Revolutionary War!"
Rich, now a resident of northern California, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1929 and is the author of more than 15 volumes of poetry and four books of nonfiction prose.
The Tanning Prize was established in August 1994 by a gift of $2 million to the Academy from the painter Dorothea Tanning. The previous recipients of the award are W.S. Merwin and James Tate. Judges for the 1996 Tanning Prize were the poets Thom Gunn, Marilyn Hacker, Daniel Hoffman, David Wagoner, and Rosanna Warren.
Wondering why your favorite writer doesn't call, doesn't write anymore? Inquire with us, and we'll try to find out what's up: Burning Questions, 2501 21st Ave. South, Suite 5, Nashville, TN 37212. Or better yet, e-mail us at Burning_Questions@bookpage.com.
Alas, we regret that personal replies are not possible.
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