cards – L i t S t a c k

The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro

The Perfume Collector Kathleen Tessaro HarperCollins Publishers First Edition: May 14, 2013 ISBN 978-0-06-225783-3 It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book in its entirety in a single day, but last week it happened with Kathleen Tessaro‘s marvelous new novel The Perfume Collector. It’s not that I was […]

Gimbling in the Wabe – In Praise of Letters

I promise, I won’t make this a diatribe on the lack of personalization in society today, nor will I bemoan the loss of the art of letter writing, or even shed a tear at the passing of cursive writing. That’s something my grandmother would do, and even though I loved […]

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.