A Letter From Mohsin Hamid

Chair of the 35th Annual Stay Home and Read a Book Ball

The Library Foundation of Los Angeles
is honored to have the support of author Mohsin Hamid
as Chair of the 35th annual Stay Home and Read a Book Ball 

Dear Readers, 

I am not from Los Angeles but my first library was a Californian library. It stood not far from a jungle gym that towered above wood chips meant to soften the blow of a fall. 

One day my parents took me inside this mysterious building. It had bright windows and smelled of books. A librarian gave us a library card, off-white with a metal strip that had some numbers and letters pressed into it. 

This was in the mid-1970s. For the next few years I went back every week, the books I had read stuffed into my backpack, countless ones I wanted to read waiting for me on the shelves. 

I spent the 1980s in Lahore, Pakistan, and my school had a library full of books that I devoured, books that otherwise would have been difficult to find. Later, I worked in a library in college. When I began my first novel, I began it in a library. 

And so it means a great deal to me that the Los Angeles Public Library has asked me to serve as the Chair of the 35th Annual Stay at Home and Read a Book Ball. I hope you will join me in the act of curling up at home with a book, reading on a comfortable sofa, separated by miles, and perhaps even by oceans, from fellow participants, and yet somehow connected, as readers always are. 

As you read, please do think of the Los Angeles Public Library, one of the finest libraries in the world. If you are able to give a donation, please do so. If you are able to visit, you will not be disappointed. It is party central, after all: the starting point of millions of parties held in solitude, year after year, and night after night, by readers just like us. 

 

RSVP AND DONATE HERE. 

Proceeds raised through the 35th Annual Stay Home and Read a Book Ball
will benefit the Library Foundation of Los Angeles in supporting the Los Angeles Public Library’s work to enrich the lives of every Angeleno.

Visit LFLA.org/StayHome to donate online, or mail donations to:
The Library Foundation of Los Angeles
630 W 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071

The Library Foundation of Los Angeles is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation (tax ID# 95-4368250).

No goods or services are provided in exchange for donations to the Stay Home and Read a Book Ball, and all contributions are fully tax-deductible. Donations for this annual fundraiser are separate from Membership.