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Gimbling in the Wabe – Flights of Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest

I suppose it could be portrayed as being somewhat spurious – a pale, doughy woman on the far side of middle age sitting in her living room, tears occasionally spilling down her face, listening to Prince’s “Purple Rain” through the earbuds plugged in to her laptop so she could turn […]

LitStack Review: Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

Some Kind of Fairy Tale Graham Joyce Doubleday/Anchor Publication Date: July 2, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-385-53578-6 Yet another World Fantasy Awards – Best Novel nominee, and yet another wonderful story. Many, many folk tales, fireside stories, elder manuscripts and vestiges of ancient lore tell of the abduction of (usually) fair young […]

Birthdays

On this day, June 18, in 1949, Chris Van Allsburg was born in East Grand Rapids, Michigan. Author and illustrator of 21 books thus far (and his artwork has been featured on a handful of other author’s works, as well), he is perhaps best known for the children’s books Jumanji and The Polar Express, both of which won Caldecott Medals (the highest US award for illustration in children’s literature), and both of which were adapted into major motion pictures. He was actually schooled as a sculptor; it was his wife who suggested that his sketches for his sculptures would be good book illustrations – the rest is history. Today he turns 72.

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.