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 224 of 448
July 16
1969 John Updike had rarely encountered the present tense in fiction when he tried it out in Rabbit, Run. it felt "exhilaratingly speedy and free," and it remained a perfect match for the Rabbit series, in which, at the end of every decade, Updike checked in on his flawed hiro as he was transformed by time and by the times. In the second book, Rabbit Redux., the headlines from that turbulent era begin to ...
— Jul 25, 2026 07:19PM
1969 John Updike had rarely encountered the present tense in fiction when he tried it out in Rabbit, Run. it felt "exhilaratingly speedy and free," and it remained a perfect match for the Rabbit series, in which, at the end of every decade, Updike checked in on his flawed hiro as he was transformed by time and by the times. In the second book, Rabbit Redux., the headlines from that turbulent era begin to ...
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Judi’s Previous Updates
Judi
is on page 237 of 448
July 29
1935 ... literary activities into an endless proliferation of pseudonyms, including Myles na gCopaleen, whose satirical "Cruiskeen Lawn" columns in the Irish Times made him a household name in Dublin during his lifetime, and Flann O'Brien, whos inventively subversive novels At Swim-Two-Biords and The Third Policeman belatedly placed him in the company of Joyce and Beckett as Ireland's great modern novelists.
— 14 hours, 29 min ago
1935 ... literary activities into an endless proliferation of pseudonyms, including Myles na gCopaleen, whose satirical "Cruiskeen Lawn" columns in the Irish Times made him a household name in Dublin during his lifetime, and Flann O'Brien, whos inventively subversive novels At Swim-Two-Biords and The Third Policeman belatedly placed him in the company of Joyce and Beckett as Ireland's great modern novelists.
Judi
is on page 236 of 448
July 28
1945 ... house cats, whose place in the canyon can be blown away like dust. Poised uneasily somewhere between them is Abel, a young Indian back from the war who on this day finds himself unable to speak to his grandfather in "the old rhythm of the tongue." Later in the day, though, alone in the canyon and looking down on the valley below, hi finds himself approaching a peace he is still years from achieving.
— Aug 06, 2026 06:53PM
1945 ... house cats, whose place in the canyon can be blown away like dust. Poised uneasily somewhere between them is Abel, a young Indian back from the war who on this day finds himself unable to speak to his grandfather in "the old rhythm of the tongue." Later in the day, though, alone in the canyon and looking down on the valley below, hi finds himself approaching a peace he is still years from achieving.
Judi
is on page 235 of 448
July 27
1966 The regular mail flights made Wednesdays the high point of the week for Edward Hoagland, who recorded in Notes from the Century Before, the "exuberant, staccato summer" he spent n the former gold-rush outposts of northwest British Columbia, where he could still glimpse the old ways, especially with a man named Dan McPhee, who had sport thirty-five years in the bush as road-maintainer, trapper, deputy...
— Aug 05, 2026 03:43PM
1966 The regular mail flights made Wednesdays the high point of the week for Edward Hoagland, who recorded in Notes from the Century Before, the "exuberant, staccato summer" he spent n the former gold-rush outposts of northwest British Columbia, where he could still glimpse the old ways, especially with a man named Dan McPhee, who had sport thirty-five years in the bush as road-maintainer, trapper, deputy...
Judi
is on page 234 of 448
July 25
1910 In his first decade in the business, George Herriman had experimented with more than a dozen comic-strip series, from Rosy Posy—Mama's Girl to Major Ozones Fresh Air, when, looking to fill up some white space at the bottom of his lates strip, The Dingbat Family, he drew a tiny mouse throwing something—a brick?—at a little black cat the was hiding it sown business. And so began the simplest and most ...
— Aug 03, 2026 04:52AM
1910 In his first decade in the business, George Herriman had experimented with more than a dozen comic-strip series, from Rosy Posy—Mama's Girl to Major Ozones Fresh Air, when, looking to fill up some white space at the bottom of his lates strip, The Dingbat Family, he drew a tiny mouse throwing something—a brick?—at a little black cat the was hiding it sown business. And so began the simplest and most ...
Judi
is on page 233 of 448
July 25
1967 Invited by the Kerner Commission to contribute to its official report on the riots in Detroit that left forty-three dead and thousands of buildings destroyed, John Hersey chose instead to report from the city on his own. Soon he focused on one event: the death during the riots of three black men at the hands of white policemen. In The Algiers Motel Incident, as he had with Hiroshima two decades ...
— Aug 03, 2026 04:30AM
1967 Invited by the Kerner Commission to contribute to its official report on the riots in Detroit that left forty-three dead and thousands of buildings destroyed, John Hersey chose instead to report from the city on his own. Soon he focused on one event: the death during the riots of three black men at the hands of white policemen. In The Algiers Motel Incident, as he had with Hiroshima two decades ...
Judi
is on page 232 of 448
July 24
NO YEAR At a crimes scene just after midnight, detectives banter until they find that the man down is one of their own, 87th Precinct detective Mike Reardon. When Evan Hunter began his 87th Precinct series with Cop Hater in 1956, making your detective a cop instead of a private eye or an elderly spinster was a new idea, as was being a mystery series around a group of investigators (some of whom,...
— Aug 02, 2026 04:21AM
NO YEAR At a crimes scene just after midnight, detectives banter until they find that the man down is one of their own, 87th Precinct detective Mike Reardon. When Evan Hunter began his 87th Precinct series with Cop Hater in 1956, making your detective a cop instead of a private eye or an elderly spinster was a new idea, as was being a mystery series around a group of investigators (some of whom,...
Judi
is on page 231 of 448
July 23
1986 When he came to, on the centre median of I-93 out of Boston, Andre Dubus first carefully explained to the police officer that he had three guns and was licensed to carry them. Then the pain hit. Dubus had pulled his car over to assist a woman and her brother who had just hit an abandoned motorcycle in the highway and had helped them to the median when another driver, avoiding the wreck, swerved off ...
— Aug 01, 2026 06:24AM
1986 When he came to, on the centre median of I-93 out of Boston, Andre Dubus first carefully explained to the police officer that he had three guns and was licensed to carry them. Then the pain hit. Dubus had pulled his car over to assist a woman and her brother who had just hit an abandoned motorcycle in the highway and had helped them to the median when another driver, avoiding the wreck, swerved off ...
Judi
is on page 230 of 448
July 22
1975 The economy's going haywire—the prime rate yo-0yoing, the cost of sugar and gas accelerating—and Ben Flesh's body is too, ravaged by multiple sclerosis. And so the great franchiser is selling everything—his Baskin-Robbinses his JoJos, his Western Autos—and putting all his chips in a single Trvel Inn tin Ringgold, Georgia, ideally situated halfway between Chicago and Disney World: two storeys, 150 ...
— Jul 29, 2026 06:53PM
1975 The economy's going haywire—the prime rate yo-0yoing, the cost of sugar and gas accelerating—and Ben Flesh's body is too, ravaged by multiple sclerosis. And so the great franchiser is selling everything—his Baskin-Robbinses his JoJos, his Western Autos—and putting all his chips in a single Trvel Inn tin Ringgold, Georgia, ideally situated halfway between Chicago and Disney World: two storeys, 150 ...
Judi
is on page 229 of 448
July 21
... to dance on Cloughie's grave in the most polite of sporting language. It's a scene that David Peace, in his fictional version of Cloughie's ordeal, The Damned Ute, ,could hardly resist, and there tense exchange, preening and vulnerable and nearly verbatim, makes a fitting end to a novel whose propulsive and obsessive treatment of its subject has led many to call it the greatest novel on English football.
— Jul 29, 2026 06:36AM
... to dance on Cloughie's grave in the most polite of sporting language. It's a scene that David Peace, in his fictional version of Cloughie's ordeal, The Damned Ute, ,could hardly resist, and there tense exchange, preening and vulnerable and nearly verbatim, makes a fitting end to a novel whose propulsive and obsessive treatment of its subject has led many to call it the greatest novel on English football.
Judi
is on page 228 of 448
July 20
1945 Patrick O'Brian was both an intensely private and and a fabulist about his own history, so not until after his Aubrey-Maturin series of naval adventures had become internationally beloved was it widely revealed that he had lived the first thirty-one years of his life under a different name, Patrick Russ, legally change his last name to O'Brian on this day, just weeks after his second marriage...
— Jul 28, 2026 06:28AM
1945 Patrick O'Brian was both an intensely private and and a fabulist about his own history, so not until after his Aubrey-Maturin series of naval adventures had become internationally beloved was it widely revealed that he had lived the first thirty-one years of his life under a different name, Patrick Russ, legally change his last name to O'Brian on this day, just weeks after his second marriage...