Mary Daniels Brown

My mother always insisted that, as soon as I was old enough to sit up, she’d find me in my crib after my nap babbling away, with a Little Golden Book on my lap. I’ve had my nose in a book ever since. I grew up in a small town, with the tiny town library literally in my backyard. As an only child in an unhappy home, I found comfort and companionship in books. As an adult I wanted to be Harry Potter, although I admit I’m more Hermione. My life has been a series of research projects. Reading has taught me that human lives are deliciously messy and that “it’s complicated” isn’t a punchline.

Last Week's Links

Literary Links

The Unexpected Benefits of Reading at Random “Elspeth Wilson on Becoming a Literary Omnivore” Scottish writer Elspeth Wilson, author of These Mortal Bodies (July 2025), concludes “reading at random won’t solve all the issues with unequal advances, difficulties in sustaining a career, and lack of diversity in publishing. But it has helped me encounter the […]

Literary Links Read More »

Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Notable Literary Deaths in 2025 Dreaming of writing your novel this year? Rip up all the rules! If your New Year’s resolutions involve getting to work on that novel you’ve been meaning to write, novelist Elizabeth McCracken has some general advice to offer. Books That Open the Mind Writers for The Atlantic offer “recommendations for

Literary Links Read More »

Last Week's Links

Literary Links

The cultural works becoming public domain in 2026 NPR informs us of the works entering the public domain this new year. There are some big names here, including the first four books of the Nancy Drew series, Dashiel Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, and Agatha Christie’s first Miss Marple mystery, The Murder at the Vicarage. Can

Literary Links Read More »

Background: 3 stacked, closed books; open notebook with pen on top. Text: The Best Books I Read in 2025

The Best Books I Read in 2025

For 2025 I decided to focus on books related to the topic of Life Stories in Literature. As usual, I read mostly fiction, but I also fit in a few nonfiction resources (about various aspects of storytelling) for Nonfiction November. Here, then, is the list, arranged alphabetically by author’s last name: 10 Best Books I

The Best Books I Read in 2025 Read More »

A stack of 3 closed books, next to an open notebook on which rests a ballpoint pen. Text: Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

Record everything! “Our memories are precious to us and constitute our sense of self. Why not enhance them by recording all of your life?” Yannic Kappes is a philosopher and a postdoc at the University of Vienna in Austria. In this article he takes the proposition that “[c]urrent technology allows for radical memory enhancement” to

Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »

Last Week's Links

Literary Links

The dawn of the post-literate society If the reading revolution [of the middle of the eighteenth century] represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the [current] screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history. James Marriott laments the “draining away of culture, critical thinking

Literary Links Read More »

stack of books and open notebook. Label: Quotation

“The Transcendence of Writing Your Fears”

I don’t write fiction, but I do read a lot of it. All that reading has made me think that the very first question fiction writers must ask themselves is Whose story is this to tell?  Writer Elaine Hsieh Chou suggests a similar thought in a recent interview: And Chou’s quotation further suggests that examining

“The Transcendence of Writing Your Fears” Read More »

Literary Hub » The 50 Biggest Literary Stories of the Year

In 2025, we were surviving, if perhaps not always thriving. We sang along to “Golden” in the grocery store and hung Labubus from our bags. We reheated nachos. We saw Sinners in multiple… Source: Literary Hub » The 50 Biggest Literary Stories of the Year

Literary Hub » The 50 Biggest Literary Stories of the Year Read More »

Last Week's Links

Literary Links

The Oxford Word of the Year 2025 is rage bait The powers that be at Oxford University Press have chosen rage bait as their word of the year for 2025. Rage bait is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to

Literary Links Read More »

Year's Best Books

Best Books of 2025

Best Books 2025 Publishers Weekly got the ball rolling on the year’s best books lists back in late October. This is the landing page, from which you can connect with focused links of works in a myriad of categories. BEST OF 2025: Holiday Gift Guide BookBub offers a list to help you “find the perfect

Best Books of 2025 Read More »

Scroll to Top