Birthdays: Blaise Pascal (1623), Elbert Hubbard (1856), Laura Z. Hobson (1900), Pauline Kael (1919), Tobias Wolff (1945), Salman Rushdie (1947), John Ralston Saul (1947)

Quote: “Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read. If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people. I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn’t occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don’t like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don’t like it, nobody is telling you to finish it. To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.” ― Salman Rushdie

“The last thing we decide about a book is what to put first.” – Blaise Pascal

Tip: You should be able to answer any question about your main character, and by the end of the book, you reader should know them almost as well as you do.

Jumpstart: You’ve been locked in a store overnight and can’t get out. What do you do? Does the kind of store make any difference (department, grocery, book)? Why? What about security?