Gathering Blue Lois Lowry Ember/Random House, Inc. Copyright 2000 ISBN 978-0-440-22949-0 Written seven years after her iconic “children’s” book, The Giver, Lois Lowry returns to a future world in the companion piece, Gathering Blue, but this time, society has not advanced. Instead, the future appears desolately dystopian, with rigid […]
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.