Kirstin Cronn-Mills

LitStack Recs: Who Do You Love & Beautiful Music for Ugly Children

Who Do You Love: Stories, by Jean Thompson May is #ShortStoryMonth, and this is third in a series of LitStackRecs on great short story collections. In my favorite short stories, something singular happens to a character, usually out of nowhere, a setting that is exceptionally vivid—almost a character in itself—and […]

Gimbling in the Wabe – Tangible Authors

I am an extremely lucky person. At times when I am feeling particularly magnanimous, I would even say that I am blessed. I live in an existence where I am surrounded by books. I own books, I can download books electronically, I have a library nearby where I can not […]

Birthdays

On this day, April 12, in 1916, children’s fiction author Beverly Cleary was born in McMinnville, Oregon. The creator of such kid lit familiars as Henry Higgins and Ramona Quimby, she struggled with reading as a child; it was a school librarian who helped her discover a love of reading and even encouraged the young girl to become a writer. She became a children’s librarian herself, and started writing her own books in an effort to create stories that children could relate to. Winner of a Newbery Medal, a National Book Award, and recognized as a Living Legend by the Library of Congress (just a few of the accolades she has received), we unfortunately lost her just a few weeks ago, at age 104.

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.