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.

A.M. Homes wins Women’s Prize

A.M. Homes wins Women’s Prize. A.M. Homes’s novel May We Be Forgiven won the award, which featured an array of top-notch nominees. But the controversy over whether a prize for fiction written by women should exist at all continues. Read that story here, too.

A.M. Homes wins Women’s Prize Read More »

Monday Miscellany

Zocalo Public Square Zocalo Public Square is a not-for-profit daily ideas exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. The entire initiative is a project of the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and the New America Foundation, and its goal is to “explore connection, place, big ideas, and what it means to

Monday Miscellany Read More »

Monday Miscellany

A Pearl Buck Novel, New After 4 Decades Big recent literary news is the discovery of a final novel by Pearl S. Buck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The manuscript was discovered in a storage unit in Texas. Buck’s son, Edgar S. Walsh, believes that Buck completed the manuscript

Monday Miscellany Read More »

Monday Miscellany

The Werewolf Novel as Post-9/11 Political Allegory? If you’ve hung around Notes in the Margin for a while, you probably know that I usually don’t review fiction about vampires, werewolves, or zombies. I understand that lots of people see these entities as metaphors for society, or for the human condition, or perhaps for political and

Monday Miscellany Read More »

Monday Miscellany

Authors weigh in on their favorite page-to-screen adaptations The opening of the latest film version of The Great Gatsby has focused interest on adaptations of books into movies. Here authors Dennis Lehane, Chuck Palahniuk, Judy Blume, Bret Easton Ellis, Warren Adler, and Kelly Oxford discuss “the times Hollywood got it right.” A Nigerian-‘Americanah’ Novel About

Monday Miscellany Read More »

Monday Miscellany

Books —> Film The latest adaptation of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is garnering most of the attention in this category right now, but there’s other news as well. Here’s some news on upcoming films: Will Baz Luhrmann’s noise dampen ‘Great Gatsby’s’ joys? “Seattle Times movie critic Moira Macdonald revisits the book’s melancholy beauty prior to

Monday Miscellany Read More »

Edgar and Christian Book Awards

Last night the Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2013 Edgar Allan Poe Awards. And Publishers Weekly has the list of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association 2013 Christian Book Award winners.

Edgar and Christian Book Awards Read More »

Monday Miscellany

I am in the throes of preparing for a 2,800-mile relocation trip. Monday Miscellany will return in a few weeks. In the meantime, you can find new material on Literature & Psychology.

Monday Miscellany Read More »

Scroll to Top