adventures – L i t S t a c k

Gimbling in the Wabe – Too Many Books

This week, I’m reposting one of my very favorite Gimblings – a little poem I wrote a few years ago that still feels true today. My house is a little less hoard-ish since I wrote this, but it’s still chock full of books. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Too Many […]

Gimbling in the Wabe – Too Many Books

An oldie, but a goodie. Enjoy! Too Many Books I have books upon the windowsills and books piled up on chairs. Books stacked high in corners and books upon the stairs. I have books packed tight on bookshelves and on top of them more books. Books piled high on nightstands […]

Birthdays

On this day, July 23, in 1971, Mohsin Hamid was born in Lahore, Pakistan to a family of Punjabi and Kashmiri descent. He spent some younger years in the US, and returned to attend Princeton where he studied under Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison (the first draft of his novel, Moth Smoke, was penned for a fiction workshop taught by Morrison). Although his career was in management and brand consulting, he always dedicated time to writing. All of his novels, which along with Moth Smoke includes The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and 2017’s Exit West, have been well received and duly honored. Now splitting his time between London and Lahore, today he turns 50.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.