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Dave Astor

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Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time: The Book Lover’s Guide to Literary Trivia Kindle Edition

by Dave Astor (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 85 ratings

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If you love classic literature and reading novels from famous fiction authors then you are going to love this book!

In Fascinating Facts, literary trivia expert and author Dave Astor provides 100-plus short chapters which contain anecdotes, oddities, coincidences, and of course great trivia about the greatest authors who have ever put pen to paper. It’s no surprise that the best writers have interesting facts surrounding them, because famous authors have to be pretty fascinating themselves in order to create the literature we cherish and enjoy so much.

Here is a sample of some of the many interesting informational nuggets and gems you will discover:

• The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” originally referred to the wealthy family in which novelist Edith Wharton (nee Jones) grew up.

• Edward Bellamy predicted debit cards in his novel Looking Backward – published in 1888!

• The 1950s “Cat in the Hat” character created by Dr. Seuss looks like a feline version of the Uncle Sam character drawn by that same writer for his 1940s editorial cartoons.

• Shakespeare and Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes died on almost the same day in 1616.

• Dorothy Parker bequeathed her money to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

• O. Henry coined the term “banana republic.”

Whether you are a bibliophile wanting to know everything about famous authors or just want to wow your friends and amaze your relatives with interesting and entertaining literary trivia, Fascinating Facts is a fun book that you’ll return to over and over again. Order your copy today!

Print length

174 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

February 28, 2017
File size

4252 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

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Enhanced typesetting

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dave Astor blogs at DaveAstorOnLiterature.com, is the author of the memoir Comic (and Column) Confessional, serves as a National Society of Newspaper Columnists board member, and writes the weekly "Montclairvoyant" topical-humor column for Baristanet.com after having done that award-winning feature for The Montclair (N.J.) Times from 2003 to early 2017. The Montclair resident is also a former magazine writer/editor, a former newspaper reporter, a former freelance cartoonist, and a graduate of Rutgers and Northwestern universities.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06XN5QNW3
Publisher ‏ : ‎ DaveAstorWrites.com (February 28, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 28, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4252 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 174 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0692851488

Best Sellers Rank: #1,070,050 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #112 in Literary Criticism Reference
- #366 in Literature Encyclopedias
- #508 in Literary History & Criticism Reference

Customer Reviews:
4.1 85 ratings

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Dave Astor

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Dave Astor is the author of the 2017 literary-trivia book "Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time" and the 2012 memoir "Comic (and Column) Confessional."

He also blogs at DaveAstorOnLiterature.com, serves as a National Society of Newspaper Columnists board member, and writes the weekly "Montclairvoyant" topical-humor column for Baristanet.com after having done that award-winning feature for The Montclair (N.J.) Times from 2003 to early 2017.

The Montclair resident is a former magazine writer/editor, a former newspaper reporter, a former freelance cartoonist, a graduate of Rutgers and Northwestern universities, the husband of French professor Laurel Cummins, and the father of Maggie and Maria.

Connect with Dave at www.DaveAstorOnLiterature.com and www.DaveAstorWrites.com

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5

85 global ratings

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DAntion

Once you open it, you’ll have a hard time putting it down.

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2023

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It’s an alliterative mouthful, but I love the title. I was eager to find how many of these authors I was familiar with. The book is organized in about 100 short chapters, each being a quick read, so it was easy to procrastinate regarding the things I had to do when I started reading. I just kept telling myself, “Just one more chapter and then I’ll go.”

The stories are fascinating. How I would have loved to have been able to reference this book to add some little-known facts to the book reports I was forced to produce in high school. I now picture Dave tuning in a report on “Fahrenheit 451” with a paragraph at the bottom that starts, “By the way, most people don’t know it, but…” I’m not going to spoil the fun on that one.

Do these fun facts matter, outside of those situations where you can impress your friends—if you have friends impressed by literature—at the bar? I think they do. In many cases, I learned about the author’s motivation for writing a particular story. In other cases, I was fascinated by the effort, often failed in the author’s lifetime, to get a book published. It was also interesting to learn how one book became famous, while a different book, by the same author, failed to succeed. These are things authors still struggle with.

I freely admit that I wasn’t aware of some of the authors in the book. That made me wonder if I should set aside more time for reading the classics. I was also surprised by how many of the authors of “the greatest novels of all time” I have read and enjoyed.
Whether you are an author, a reader, someone interested in history, or just a person who loves knowing something interesting about someone you admire, you would enjoy this book. One thing for sure, once you open it, you’ll have a hard time putting it down.

Helpful

Bonnie

I love the little insights into the lives of writers I ...

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2017

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I love the little insights into the lives of writers I admire and this book does just that. I like how it's written so I can pick it up and read in small chunks when time allows it.

One person found this helpful

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Susan Moore Jordan

A "Must Have" for Fans of Classic Fiction!

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2017

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Reading about creative people who have had successful careers, in this instance authors, is something I appreciate. As a lifelong musician I’ve loved reading biographical material about such composers as Verdi, Brahms, Puccini and Beethoven. Dave Astor’s book "Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time" offers pertinent and intriguing bits of biographical information about, well, those authors as described – a hundred of them, from Alcott to Zola.
In brief chapters not much longer than the title of the book, Astor gives us peeks into the lives of these definitely fascinating, famous authors. I wasn’t aware, for instance, that Louisa May Alcott, one of my favorite authors, shared a birthday with her father … who was very influential in her life, nor that they died within two days of each other.
Nor was I aware that Herman Melville’s now-acclaimed classic "Moby Dick" wasn’t well received, and in fact Melville struggled with relative obscurity during his lifetime. Nor that another favorite of mine, James Michener, didn’t publish his first book, "Tales of the South Pacific," until he was forty. The book won the Pulitzer Prize, and Michener continued an impressive career, writing an additional twenty-five novels, “many of them long, heavily-researched, bestselling books.”
The Table of Contents lists the authors alphabetically, so this is a nice little volume to pick up when you have a few free minutes and would like to learn a little something about a favorite author.

7 people found this helpful

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Thad Allen

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2017

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It was disappointing to find very few "fascinating" facts in this book. It was an okay read, but do not look for anything out of the ordinary.

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2024

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This has been great. So many favourite books – Jane Austen, Daphne du Maurier, PD James, DH Lawrence, Graham Greene, George Orwell, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway - this goes on and on! Fabulous – especially those from the UK, but not all of them, of course. Quite a few are new for me and I guess I need to read some of these! Lots of little trivia tidbits - interesting, informative and fun.

I recommend this book to lovers of literature.

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2021

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I am a great lover of classic books and I also enjoy reading biographies of the authors who wrote the classic books I've enjoyed. This short book is a selection of sound bytes, providing interesting and often little know facts and insights into the lives, loves, and writing processes of a large number of authors. For me, it was a bit like a box of chocolates with each short chapter being a tantalizing taste of what I could uncover if I wanted to research the various people further. I liked the idea of giving small titbits of information to trigger searches for more detail at the readers discretion, it is very empowering.

The book covers a huge range of writers, many of whom I already knew like Hemingway, Faulkner, Gilman, Huxley, Laurence, Tolkien, and Wells, and others who are new to me. I was delighted to discover all these new classic books and famous authors whose works I will be delving into over the next several years. I will certainly be reverting back to this gem of a book when deciding on my next read.

I recommend this book to lovers of literature who are interested in finding new books and authors.

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Kindle Customer Paula

Fascinating Find

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2024

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Who knew that novelist Fanny Burney underwent a mastectomy, at a time before anaesthetic was discovered? Who even knew that mastectomies existed in the early nineteenth-century? Who knew that Vladimir Nabokov had Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a student when he was teaching at Cornell? Or that Marie-Henri Beyle used more than two hundred pen names, of which Stendhal is one? Dave Astor, that’s who, in his Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors And The Greatest Novels Of All Time.

It’s an intriguing little text, in which the author puts a humorous slant on the anecdotes contained therein, giving due credit to subscribers of his website for providing some of them. It’s not necessarily a book for reading all in one go, in my opinion—although I did—but more for dipping in and out of to find little nuggets of interesting information about a host of authors you know—and probably some you’ve never heard of.

I’m not too proud to include myself in the latter category, but now that I’ve heard of them they’re on my wish list—along with some authors I know of but had never got around to reading. If—like me—you’re keen to experience some of the best writing around, I can recommend this handy little mine of literary information.

JJF

An extremely knowledgable literary man!

Reviewed in Canada on March 11, 2021

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His descriptive way of introducing the famous authors, most of whom I've read over time, come back to life. Thus so in a way that nudges one to read them again or look to find the ones you'd not gotten around to read back then. Save of course Mordecai Richler, my one street over neighbour, growing up way back then. Also Edgar Alan Poe, poems and short stories, Faulkner, Hemingway, London and l’ll stop right now, because they were all great. Simply put, Dave Astor's "Fascinating Facts" is nothing less than a treasure, for any serious reader and aspiring ones who want to discover memorable reading!