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.

Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Authors Who Write Outstanding Mystery Series and Stellar Standalones One question that comes up periodically on book blogs is this: Do you prefer to read series or standalone novels? But this article by novelist Alicia Beckman reminded me that there’s also another side to this question: Do authors prefer to write series or standalone books? […]

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Book covers: Beach Read by Emily Henry; Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan; The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline; Exiles by Jane Harper; The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield; A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki; The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

6 Degrees of Separation: A Very Short Journey

Beach Read by Emily Henry is this month’s starting point:  “ A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters. Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews

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stack of 3 books plus open book with pen. Title: Top Ten Tuesday

#TopTenTuesday : The Best Books I Read in 2022

Goodreads insists that I read 44 books in 2022, but my records indicate 46. Whichever number is correct, here are the best ones: 10 best + 5 honorable mention. Listed alphabetically by author’s last name. The 10 Best Connelly, Michael. Desert Star This latest installment in Connelly’s overlapping Harry Bosch/Renée Ballard series finds the detectives

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Celebrate National Science Fiction Day!

Today is National Science Fiction Day here in the United States. Science fiction touches so many different areas of literature that most people can find one area that they love. Science fiction can include stories based in space with aliens like E.T. or space battles like Star Wars. The genre also can include time travel,

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fireworks: Happy New Year

Literary Links

Happy New Year! Welcome to the first blog post of the year! NaJoWriMo Journal Writing Challenge Starts January 1st I know a lot of book bloggers are also writers. Many participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, every November. Since I don’t write fiction, I’ve always been a little jealous. But, if you write in

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stack of 3 books plus open book with pen. Title: In Memoriam

Notable Literary Deaths in 2022

This final post of the year is always the saddest. Notable Literary Deaths in 2022 “An Incomplete List of the Writers, Editors, and Great Literary Minds We Lost This Year” From Lit Hub.

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A stack of three closed books. Next to them lies an open notebook and a pen. Title: 2022: A Literary Review

2022: A Literary Review

‘Expressive times’: Publishing industry an open book in 2022 “In 2022, the story of book publishing was often the industry itself,” writes Hillel Italie for AP News. A Novelist’s Review of the State of 2022 Literary Fiction Mateo Askaripour is a Brooklyn-based writer whose first novel, Black Buck—which Colson Whitehead calls a “mesmerizing novel, executing

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Screenshot: Text: 2022 My Year in Books. 15,609 pages read; 44 books read.

2022: My Year in Reading

Thanks to Goodreads, here are my reading statistics for 2022: I’m gratified to see that, despite treating 2022 as a year of unplanned reading, these statistics are nearly the same as those for the previous 10 years. In that January post I also listed some general goals for 2022: Did I meet those goals? 1. to

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A layout of book covers: 1989 by Val McDermid; Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie; Eileen by Otessa Moshfegh; The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken; Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara; Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr; The Last Chairlift by John Irving; Lessons by Ian McEwan; Ely by David Berenbaum; We Spread by Iain Reid; Trust by Herman Diaz; Babel by R.F. Kuang

Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection 

Here are the newest additions to my book collection, nine that I got as presents this holiday season, followed by three I bought. Links are to Goodreads, as I haven’t read any of these yet. 1989 by Val McDermid Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie Eileen by Otessa Moshfegh The Hero of This Book by

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