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.

The Joan Didion Documentary by Griffin Dunne and Susanne Rostock — Kickstarter

We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live is the first and only documentary being made about Joan Didion. While her writing is fierce and exposed, Joan herself is an incredibly private person. We have the privilege to know Joan as a subject and also as a member of our family. Our director, Griffin Dunne, […]

The Joan Didion Documentary by Griffin Dunne and Susanne Rostock — Kickstarter Read More »

bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Life Stories: A Select Bibliography

  Aftel, Mandy. The Story of Your Life: Becoming the Author of Your Experience (Fireside, 1996) Atkinson, Robert. The Gift of Stories: Practical and Spiritual Applications of Autobiography, Life Stories, and Personal Mythmaking (Bergin and Garvey, 1995) Estrade, Patrick. You Are What You Remember: A Pathbreaking Guide to Understanding and Interpreting Your Childhood Memories (Da

Life Stories: A Select Bibliography Read More »

The Literary United States: A Map of the Best Book for Every State | Brooklyn Magazine

Several of these books number among the usual suspects of lists of this kind, but many remain anything but widely known. Almost all are fiction and most are novels; some were written for children, but just about every genre is represented. All are literary in voice and spirit; every last one will let you understand

The Literary United States: A Map of the Best Book for Every State | Brooklyn Magazine Read More »

bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

“Gone Girl”: Forging a Life Story

  Related Posts * Introduction to Life Stories * “Before I Go to Sleep,” S.J. Watson: We Are What We Remember * Review of The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen * Life Stories: The Personal Component * 11 Novels That Feature Life Stories * Literary Life Stories: The Character Biography * Life Stories: A

“Gone Girl”: Forging a Life Story Read More »

2014 National Book Award Finalists Named

The National Book Foundation has revealed the finalists for the 2014 National Book Awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature. The fiction shortlist includes 2014 “5 Under 35” honoree Phil Klay, along with two-time National Book Award finalist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Marilynne Robinson. Also shortlisted, for nonfiction, is Roz Chast, the

2014 National Book Award Finalists Named Read More »

Australian’s P.O.W. Novel Wins Man Booker Prize – NYTimes.com

The Australian novelist Richard Flanagan was awarded the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which tells the harrowing story of an Australian surgeon who is held in a Japanese P.O.W. camp and is forced to work on the Thailand-Burma Railway. via Australian’s P.O.W. Novel Wins Man Booker Prize

Australian’s P.O.W. Novel Wins Man Booker Prize – NYTimes.com Read More »

Monday Miscellany

Homeless Outreach in Volumes: Books by Bike for ‘Outside’ People in Oregon This city [Portland, Oregon] has a deeply dyed liberal impulse beating in its veins around social and environmental causes, and a literary culture that has flourished like the blackberry thickets that mark misty Northwest woods. It is also one of the most bike-friendly,

Monday Miscellany Read More »

“Little Heathens” by Mildred A. Kalish

Kalish, Mildred Armstrong. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression  Bantam Books, 2007 Some time around 1930, when the author was “little more than five years old” (p. 6), she, her mother, her baby sister, and her two brothers went to live with her mother’s parents in

“Little Heathens” by Mildred A. Kalish Read More »

Patrick Modiano Wins Nobel Prize in Literature – NYTimes.com

Patrick Modiano, the French novelist whose works often explore the traumas of the Nazi occupation of France and hinge on the themes of memory, loss and the puzzle of identity, won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. In an announcement in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy cited Mr. Modiano’s ability to evoke “the most

Patrick Modiano Wins Nobel Prize in Literature – NYTimes.com Read More »

The Classics Club

Gothic Elements in Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle”

Gothic literature features characteristics such as magic, mystery, chivalry, horror, clanking chains, ghosts, and dark castles to create a spooky atmosphere rife with foreboding and possibility. Over time Gothic emphasis changed from reliance on these external trappings for their own sake to a focus on the inner workings of the human psyche that the Gothic

Gothic Elements in Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” Read More »

Scroll to Top