Alex Ross

Artist Alex Ross was born in Portland, Oregon on this date in 1970.

He is best known for his watercolor paintings found in or on illustrious publications such as Marvels, Astro City, Batman and Justice. His artwork may be found in comic books (and their covers) but if you've seen his work, there's no doubt that it is art in the highest sense of the term.

This isn't Tippy the Turtle, you know.

My favorite work by Ross is a 4-issue series he created with Mark Waid in 1996 called Kingdom Come. It is the superhero equivilent of the gotterdamerung or ragnarok. Sure, that theme has been done to death in comics, but this story of the twilight of the gods is the superior to all the others.

Ross lives and works in the greater Chicagoland area.

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was born on this date in 1942.

A personal hero of mine, he is best known in the popular culture alternately as "the Smartest Man on the Planet," the guy that wrote A Brief History of Time, and the "Wheelchair Guy" due to a lengthy and debilitating bout with ALS.

And yes, Aldo, I have read it. Twice.

So Happy Birthday, Professor, and may you continue to live a productive life (in defiance of the odds) for years to come.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien was born on this day in 1892. As you probably already know, he is the author behind The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit.

"Pipe weed"? No wonder he was so popular in the 1960's.

My first exposure to The Hobbit came when I was very young and it was assigned reading in the 6th Grade. I read The Fellowship of the Ring shortly thereafter, but wasn't mentally prepared to understand it just then; I couldn't maintain the momentum and abandoned The Two Towers very early on.

Years later, when the films were in development I decided I needed to read them before then-largely-untested filmmaker and schlockmaster Peter Jackson committed them to film; I finally read the whole thing back-to-back-to-back in 1995. I've read the whole thing again a couple of times since then, as well as The Atlas of Middle Earth and some of the supporting books put out by Christopher Tolkien in more recent years that serve as a kind of "making of" guide. I've also read all the supporting books behind the films: The Art of..., the Making of..., etc. I thought the book on Weapons and Warfare was particularly brilliant, giving insight to the practical whys and wherefores of some of the finer details of the visual medium.

I don't want to over expose it (neither the books nor the films) by reading it or seeing it too many times like I've done with most of my childhood films. However, I have read the second chapter of Fellowship about a jillion times. It is an info dump of epic proportions, and I love it to death. It is pure genius the way they broke it up in the films between the aftermath of Bilbo's party, the Mines of Moria, and the beginning of The Return of the King.

The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin remain on my shelf. I may read either of them this year, but I kind of doubt it. Maybe though.

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was born on this day in 1920. He was a 20th Century renaissance man, a real honest-to-goodness polymath of the modern age.

His short stories "The Last Question" and "All the Troubles of the World" are favorites of mine. I've owned a paperback copy of Foundation for 20 years; maybe 2011 is the year I'm destined to read it. Hari seldon would know. I'm also keenly interested in The Caves of Steel and The Gods Themselves.

Asimov died in 1992.

The State I'm In

Today is Brian's birthday. He is the creator of The State I'm In blog, as well as a frequent commenter at the Reader.

Truth be told, he's one of the the oldest friends I have, having first met him in the early 1980's when we attended the same grade school. He had recently obtained the Pac Man game cartridge for the Atari 2600, and I was lying about having recently obtained the Pac Man game cartridge for the Atari 2600. And a friendship was born.

Keeping with the writer's theme, he is today a successful playwright and dramatist in his own right.

Stop by his web page and say hello, won't you?

Sarah Vowell

Happy birthday to Sarah Vowell, author of The Wordy Shipmates and a favorite here at the Reader!

A favorite quote: "Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know."
Sarah Vowell
The Partly Cloudy Patriot

John Kennedy Toole

Today is John Kennedy Toole's birthday. He was born on this date in 1937.

Sadly, Toole committed suicide in 1969 and was never a published author in his own lifetime.

Years later, his mother found his manuscript for A Confederacy of Dunces and managed to get it published. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, 12 years after the author's death. I've heard it is very, very funny. It is currently on my shelf waiting to be read.

Philip K. Dick

Besides being Arthur Clarke's birthday, December 16 is also notable as Philip K. Dick's birthday.

The prolific Dick authored hundreds of novels and short stories over his lifetime; readers of this blog know I consider him a new favorite of mine, having recently read VALIS, UBIK, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Man in the High Castle.

There are many of his novels currently on my bedside table waiting to be read; I will likely start A Scanner Darkly or The Galactic Pot Healer next. I'd like to read the short story The Electric Ant if I can get my hands on it.

Dick died on March 2, 1982.

The movie Blade Runner was based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and released in June 1982; he has since enjoyed a fame in death that he only began to appreciate in life, with story credits for the movies Total Recall, Minority Report, Screamers, Paycheck and next year's The Adjustment Bureau to his credit.

Arthur C. Clarke

Tomorrow is Arthur C. Clarke's birthday.

Clarke may be the author I can credit with giving me a love for science fiction. (Well, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Gene Roddenberry too, but this is a blog about reading, so ACC gets the nod for written science fiction.) I've read all four of the 2001 books (they all have their moments), and part of The Lost Worlds of 2001, the out of print account of the making of the book and film. The short story The Sentinel is particularly good.

I've also read The Songs of Distant Earth, The Hammer of God, Childhood's End and The Last Theorem. Rendevous with Rama is the only book of his currently on my shelf waiting to be read.

Clarke died in 2008.

Favorite Quote: "For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something." - from 2001: A Space Odyssey

UPDATE: The Reader had its 500th visitor last night. Thanks for visiting, everybody! I hope you are having as much fun reading it as I am writing it!

Mark Twain

A very happy 175th birthday to Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain. He of course needs no introduction.

I read the first eight chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a senior in high school. I'm going to (start over and) finish it, probably sooner rather than later.

Happy Dodransbicentennial, American Icon!

Quietly Disgruntled

...also, a Happy Birthday goes out to Quietly Disgruntled.

One of my two most frequent (ok, only) commenters, he is a budding author in his own right, thanks to NaNoWriMo.

Happy Birthday!

Madeleine L'Engle

Author Madeleine L'Engle was born on this day in 1918. She authored dozens of books, and is well known for her "young adult" fiction, especially A Wrinkle In Time. Wrinkle is a charming little book about mad science and the importance of family and is a great introduction to the concept of the tesseract. I read it a few years ago, and lent my copy of it to my nephew earlier this year.

It is definitely worth a read, no matter what your age is.

L'Engle died in 2007.

Alan Lightman

Today is author Alan Lightman's birthday; he is also a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books Einstein's Dreams and Good Benito are both pretty sharp.