Mary Daniels Brown

Mary Daniels Brown learned at an early age how to read people, and she’s been doing that ever since. Combining advanced education in both literature and psychology, she reads and reviews novels that explore identity, the search for meaning and purpose in life, and the varieties of human experience. She’s been blogging about books at Notes in the Margin for more than 25 years. Mary believes that her focus on Life Stories in Literature has made her both a more astute reader and a happier, more human person.

Deaths of Mailer, Vonnegut close book on influential Vietnam era :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Books

Deaths of Mailer, Vonnegut close book on influential Vietnam era :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Books “Here, a roll call of some of the notables in the arts and popular culture who died in 2007.” Sadly, it’s quite a long list.

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Mailer, Paley, Vonnegut: same era, different voices – Los Angeles Times

Mailer, Paley, Vonnegut: same era, different voices – Los Angeles Times In a piece in the Los Angeles Times Morris Dickstein discusses three literary icons who died in 2007: American fiction lost three of its most warmly admired figures this year, all dead at the age of 84 after long careers. Critics love the idea

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The Best Books I Read in 2007

Listed alphabetically by author Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights Butler, Octavia E. Kindred Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking Follett, Ken. The Pillars of the Earth Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love Hood, Ann. The Knitting Circle Kallos, Stephanie. Broken for You Lippman, Laura. What the Dead Know Rowling, J. K.

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Good News for Libraries

Pew Internet: Information Searches That Solve Problems There’s good news for libraries in a report issued yesterday of a joint project by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. The topic of the study was how Americans approach problems that might be linked to government: The problems covered in the

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Critics’ Picks: Favorite Books of 2007 – New York Times

Critics’ Picks: Favorite Books of 2007 – New York Times New York Times’s reviewers Janet Maslin, Michiko Kakutani, and William Grimes each offer their list of the 10 favorite books they reviewed during 2007. These are not 10-best lists, the article points out. Rather, each reviewer “picked the 10 books we covered most avidly.” The

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One Critic’s List of Best Books Read in 2007

An instant classic about a little-known NW place tops book list John Marshall, book critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, lists the 10 best books he read in 2007. Some folks love these lists, some folks loathe them. This critic believes that compiling such lists requires valuable side-by-side assessment and brings added attention to fine books

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What’s a nice girl like Ann Rule doing in a genre like true crime?

What’s a nice girl like Ann Rule doing in a genre like true crime? In this piece in one of her hometown newspapers, true-crime queen Ann Rule, a former Seattle police officer, tells how she found her true calling. Her first book contract was for the story of a serial killer then stalking the Pacific

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The Most Literate Cities in the U.S.

Minneapolis Ousts Seattle as Most Literate City The folks at The Seattle Times are lamenting their city’s fall from the top spot of the annual list of most literate cities in the U.S. The rankings, originated and authored by CCSU’s [Central Connecticut State University] president John W. Miller, compare the country’s 69 biggest cities in

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Books of 2007: Science

THIRD CULTURE HOLIDAY READING 2007 This is the season for year-end lists of books in which the mainstream review media steer literate culture away from deep questions about how our world works and who we are and toward celebrations of narcissism, celebrity gossip, and literary cliques. John Brockman, editor and publisher at Edge, laments “that

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Dorothy Sayers and British Detective Fiction

NPR : A Brutal, British Mystery Novel for Boxing Day Jonathan Hayes, a New York City forensic pathologist, describes how a BBC broadcast of Dorothy Sayers’s novel The Nine Tailors made him appreciate Sayers’s influence on the mystery genre: In Nine Tailors, the violence is not bloodless, but brutal, and the characters are made of

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