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.

Monday Miscellany

Feeling Bookish? The big book event of the last week was the arrival of Bookish. “We know books,” the site declares. Its announced purpose is to allow readers to search, discover, read, and share information about books. Created by publishing giants Penguin, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster, the site will work with USA Today to […]

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Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman Confirmed To Reteam For ‘Before I Go To Sleep’

Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman Confirmed To Reteam For ‘Before I Go To Sleep’. I’m excited to hear about this film, based on quite a suspenseful novel. And Colin Firth. . . . The film is expected to appear in 2014.

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Monday Miscellany

Hogwarts Is in Your Head, Harry: Conspiracy Theories About Literature Emily Temple weighs in over at The Atlantic: Sherlock Holmes and Watson are lovers, Winnie the Pooh is a mental-illness allegory, and other theories that might forever alter your favorite books. There was a pretty fascinating article over at Salon earlier this month, in which

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Mantel Wins Costa Award

Mantel Wins Costa Award Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies has won another major literary award, taking home the Costa Book Award and its £30,000 prize. Late last year, the novel won the Booker Prize (as did the previous book in her series, Wolf Hall), making Bring Up the Bodies the only book to win

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Applegate, Klassen, Lake Win Newbery, Caldecott, Printz

Applegate, Klassen, Lake Win Newbery, Caldecott, Printz Katherine Applegate has won the 2013 Newbery Medal for The One and Only Ivan (Harper), a novel narrated by a silverback gorilla that lives in an ill-run roadside attraction with other performing animals; the book was edited by Anne Hoppe. Jon Klassen has won the 2013 Randolph Caldecott

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Monday Miscellany

Hemingway family mental illness explored in new film Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, struggled with depression throughout his life before committing suicide in 1961. In this article from CNN, his gradddaughter, Mariel Hemingway, discusses a new documentary about the family that she hopes will increase awareness of and allow

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Monday Miscellany

Making Appointments With (Fictional) Doctors A fictional M.D. will not reduce your fever, but she or he might reduce your boredom. That’s because many medical protagonists — whether general practitioners or something else — are quite interesting. They’re often not liberal arts types, but, heck, non-liberal arts types can be compelling characters, too. Also of

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Edgar Nominees

Edgar Nominees Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for this year’s Edgar Awards. I’m chagrined to see that I’ve read only one of all the works nominated. (But I do have another one on my reading list for the next few months.)

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2012 National Book Critics Circle Finalists Announced

2012 National Book Critics Circle Finalists Announced The 30 finalists in six categories for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced. Winners will be announced on Thursday, February 28 at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium  

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Monday Miscellany

The discovery of Mars in literature David Seed, author of Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction, explains why the red planet has inspired so much speculative fiction. Reasons to Re-Joyce Is literary fiction really a dying breed? In The New York Times Darin Strauss argues that it is not: So things might look pretty bad. But

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