Judi’s Reviews > A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year > Status Update
Judi
is on page 399 of 448
December 20
3002 When their client asked, "So what can you tell me about Michael Blomkvist?" Lisbeth Salander, Milton Security's best researcher, reports that Blomkvist is a careful reporter, was likely set up for the libel conviction that got him sentenced to three months in prison that very morning, and hates the nickname the newspapers have given him, "Kalle" Blomkvist, after Astrid Lindgren's boys detective...
— Jan 07, 2026 05:03AM
3002 When their client asked, "So what can you tell me about Michael Blomkvist?" Lisbeth Salander, Milton Security's best researcher, reports that Blomkvist is a careful reporter, was likely set up for the libel conviction that got him sentenced to three months in prison that very morning, and hates the nickname the newspapers have given him, "Kalle" Blomkvist, after Astrid Lindgren's boys detective...
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Judi’s Previous Updates
Judi
is finished
December 31
1979 It should have been his big break; maybe it was. Harvey Pekar, always scrounging for recognition for his slice-of-life American Splendor comic books, got a lengthy and perceptive rave from Carola Dibbell in the Village Voice. What did it lead to? Not much, he sourly reported in a later comic, just wasted time and money, as short-lived enthusiasts (and movie producers) promised work but never ...
— Jan 12, 2026 12:01PM
1979 It should have been his big break; maybe it was. Harvey Pekar, always scrounging for recognition for his slice-of-life American Splendor comic books, got a lengthy and perceptive rave from Carola Dibbell in the Village Voice. What did it lead to? Not much, he sourly reported in a later comic, just wasted time and money, as short-lived enthusiasts (and movie producers) promised work but never ...
Judi
is on page 409 of 448
December 30
1983 "In the end," Mme. Landau tells the narrator of W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants, "it is hard to know what it is that someone dies of." Paul Bereyter died on this day at the age of seven-four by lying down on the railway tracks outside he German hometown. Like the other three men profiled in Sebald's novel—if "novel" is what you want to call it—Beretyter emigrated from Germany, but he was the only ...
— Jan 12, 2026 10:40AM
1983 "In the end," Mme. Landau tells the narrator of W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants, "it is hard to know what it is that someone dies of." Paul Bereyter died on this day at the age of seven-four by lying down on the railway tracks outside he German hometown. Like the other three men profiled in Sebald's novel—if "novel" is what you want to call it—Beretyter emigrated from Germany, but he was the only ...
Judi
is on page 408 of 448
December 29
1913 ...Honor and recognition in case of success." It is true, though, that a letter from Shackleton, announcing the expedition to make the first crossing of Antarctica that he later recounted in the adventure classic South, appeared in the Times on this day. What may also be apocryphal however, is the claim of one early Shackleton biographer that the explorer classified the responses to this letter ....
— Jan 12, 2026 06:28AM
1913 ...Honor and recognition in case of success." It is true, though, that a letter from Shackleton, announcing the expedition to make the first crossing of Antarctica that he later recounted in the adventure classic South, appeared in the Times on this day. What may also be apocryphal however, is the claim of one early Shackleton biographer that the explorer classified the responses to this letter ....
Judi
is on page 407 of 448
December 28
NO YEAR ...course across Europe that begins with an accidental murder. The Man Who Watched Trains Go By was just one of a dozen or so novels the impossibly prolific Georges Simenon published in 1938 and one of hundreds he wrote in his lifetime, divided mostly between his Maigret mysteries and his Romans durs ("hard novels"), of which The Man Who Watched Trains Go By is a memorably flinty example.
— Jan 12, 2026 05:30AM
NO YEAR ...course across Europe that begins with an accidental murder. The Man Who Watched Trains Go By was just one of a dozen or so novels the impossibly prolific Georges Simenon published in 1938 and one of hundreds he wrote in his lifetime, divided mostly between his Maigret mysteries and his Romans durs ("hard novels"), of which The Man Who Watched Trains Go By is a memorably flinty example.
Judi
is on page 406 of 448
December 27
1908 Danny Ramsay, like any boy where it' cold enough to snow, has a sense of when a snowball is coming, and so, naturally, he ducks, and the snowball, carrying inside it an egg-shaped stone hidden there by his antagonist, Percy Staunton, instead hits Mrs. Mary Dempster, the pregnant young wife of the Baptist minister, knocking her to the ground, bringing on a lifelong madness, and hastening the ...
— Jan 11, 2026 06:40AM
1908 Danny Ramsay, like any boy where it' cold enough to snow, has a sense of when a snowball is coming, and so, naturally, he ducks, and the snowball, carrying inside it an egg-shaped stone hidden there by his antagonist, Percy Staunton, instead hits Mrs. Mary Dempster, the pregnant young wife of the Baptist minister, knocking her to the ground, bringing on a lifelong madness, and hastening the ...
Judi
is on page 405 of 448
December 26
1930 "Julian, lost in the coonskins, felt the tremendous excitement, the great thrilling lump in the chest and abdomen that comes before the administering of an unknown, well-deserved punishment. He knew he was in for it." It's the end of a long night—Christmas night, in fact—that Julian spent at a roadhouse and then in his car in the parking lot with a gangster's girl, and he knows, as he's driven...
— Jan 10, 2026 07:21AM
1930 "Julian, lost in the coonskins, felt the tremendous excitement, the great thrilling lump in the chest and abdomen that comes before the administering of an unknown, well-deserved punishment. He knew he was in for it." It's the end of a long night—Christmas night, in fact—that Julian spent at a roadhouse and then in his car in the parking lot with a gangster's girl, and he knows, as he's driven...
Judi
is on page 404 of 448
December 25
1905 Jessie Chambers gave Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience to D.H. Lawrence for Christmas.
— Jan 09, 2026 09:15AM
1905 Jessie Chambers gave Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience to D.H. Lawrence for Christmas.
Judi
is on page 403 of 448
December 24
1936 George Orwell spent his Christmas traveling to Barcelona to join in the fight against Fascism in Spain, but on the way he stopped in Paris and met Henry Miller for the first time. Orwell had called Miller's Tropic of Cancer a "remarkable book" the previous year, but the two, one ascetic and the other hedonistic, had little else in common, especially concerning Orwell's destination. Going to Spain...
— Jan 09, 2026 08:33AM
1936 George Orwell spent his Christmas traveling to Barcelona to join in the fight against Fascism in Spain, but on the way he stopped in Paris and met Henry Miller for the first time. Orwell had called Miller's Tropic of Cancer a "remarkable book" the previous year, but the two, one ascetic and the other hedonistic, had little else in common, especially concerning Orwell's destination. Going to Spain...
Judi
is on page 402 of 448
December 23
NO YEAR Angus Wilson was an admirer, and later a biographer, of Charles Dickens, and at the opening of his novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, he makes his main character, Gerald Middleton, a bit of a Scrooge. Gerald is "a man of mildly but persistently depressive temperament," and "such men are not at their best at breakfast, nor is the week before Christmas their happiest time." He's only a bit of a Scrooge..
— Jan 09, 2026 05:33AM
NO YEAR Angus Wilson was an admirer, and later a biographer, of Charles Dickens, and at the opening of his novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, he makes his main character, Gerald Middleton, a bit of a Scrooge. Gerald is "a man of mildly but persistently depressive temperament," and "such men are not at their best at breakfast, nor is the week before Christmas their happiest time." He's only a bit of a Scrooge..
Judi
is on page 401 of 448
December 22
1940 ..him a "Hollywood scenarist" and took little note of his poor-selling novels, including Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust; but they focused instead on his wife, Eileen who died in the crash too, just four days before My Sister Eileen, the Broadway play based on hir sister Ruch McKenney's bestselling memoir ()and later the source for the musical Wonderful Town), had its hit opening night.
— Jan 08, 2026 07:32AM
1940 ..him a "Hollywood scenarist" and took little note of his poor-selling novels, including Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust; but they focused instead on his wife, Eileen who died in the crash too, just four days before My Sister Eileen, the Broadway play based on hir sister Ruch McKenney's bestselling memoir ()and later the source for the musical Wonderful Town), had its hit opening night.
