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.

Michael Crichton Dies

Michael Crichton Dies – ArtsBeat Blog – NYTimes.com: Michael Crichton, the author of the blockbuster science-fiction novels ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘The Andromeda Strain’ and ‘State of Fear,’ has died. He was 66.

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How to Read Like a President

Essay – How to Read Like a President – NYTimes.com: “You can tell a lot about a president — or a presidential candidate — by what he reads, or says he reads,” declares Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, in this essay in the New York Times. After discussing both John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s favorite

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R.I.P., Tony Hillerman

Here are two retrospectives on Tony Hillerman: In Appreciation of Tony Hillerman, The Christian Science Monitor bestselling mystery author provided insight into the native people and culture of the Southwest, Los Angeles Times

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Tony Hillerman, Novelist, Dies at 83

Tony Hillerman, Novelist, Dies at 83 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com: The Associated Press has reported the death of novelist Tony Hillerman,”whose lyrical, authentic and compelling mystery novels set among the Navajos of the Southwest blazed innovative trails in the American detective story,” according to New York Times reviewer Marilyn Stasio.

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Robert Jordan, Hemingway’s Bipartisan Hero : NPR

Robert Jordan, Hemingway’s Bipartisan Hero : NPR: Barack Obama and John McCain don’t agree on much, but they apparently agree on this: They’re fierce political opponents, but it turns out that the presidential candidates do agree on a literary matter: Each man picks Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls as a favorite.

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Annie Proulx no longer at home on the range

Annie Proulx no longer at home on the range – Los Angeles Times: “I wish I’d never written it,” prize-winning author Annie Proulx says of her most famous story, “Brokeback Mountain,” which was made into a popular movie. Now Proulx, age 73, who “has often criticized the literary establishment for knowing nothing about what goes

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American Publishers and Foreign Languages at the Frankfurt Book Fair

American Publishers and Foreign Languages at the Frankfurt Book Fair – NYTimes.com: As a follow-up to several previous posts about the recent announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Motoko Rich, writing from the Frankfurt Book Fair, explains why most Americans had never heard of the winner: Although there are exceptions among the big publishing

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The Best Foreign Books You’ve Never Heard Of : NPR

The Best Foreign Books You’ve Never Heard Of : NPR: French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize for literature Thursday. If most Americans have never heard of this accomplished author of more than 30 novels, essays and story collections, perhaps it’s because there is so little emphasis on international books in the

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A whale of a debate over ‘Moby Dick’

A whale of a debate over ‘Moby Dick’ | csmonitor.com: Please, spare us any more giant mammal jokes! Here in Massachusetts we’ve had to listen to every possible commentator refer to it as a ‘whale of a debate,’ but, after a lively discussion in our state House of Representatives we are now a step closer

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Note to Comment Spammers

Comments are not automatically posted; I have to manually approve each one. Any comment that is not substantively related to the topic of the original post will not be approved, so it will do you no good to submit a list of bogus links here. While it is certainly a tedious task for me to

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