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 group of black silhouettes of people standing in front of a large open book. The word "lists" is on the left-hand page. The phrase "Best Books of 2022" is on the right-hand page.

More Best Books of 2022 Lists

Related Post: Our Favorite Books of the Year From the editors of Oprah Daily, “its list of 45 Favorite Books of 2022, spanning fiction genres, including romance and suspense, to nonfiction standouts in memoir, science, and biography.” The Ten Best History Books of 2022 From Smithsonian magazine. Award Winning Nonfiction Books of 2022 “Five Books […]

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

#TopTenTuesday Books I Hope Santa Brings This Year

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr  Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara  Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie 1989 by Val McDermid Lessons by Ian McEwan The Hero of This Book, by Elizabeth McCracken Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng The Last Chairlift by John Irving Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

A (hopefully premature) obituary for Bookforum and the magazines that connect us David L. Ulin laments the closing of Bookforum, a review journal “positioned in the middle territory between service journalism and the academy”: To engage with an issue has long felt to me like going to a fabulous party where the guests are not

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stack of books and open notebook. Label: Quotation

The Difference Between Empathy and Sympathy

“There’s a difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is when you feel an alignment with a particular character. Empathy is when you see things from that character’s point of view. Larry Cook [the Lear-like father in A Thousand Acres] is someone I don’t have any sympathy for, but I needed to have empathy in order

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

Top Ten Tuesday: Lots of Lists of Books You Can Read in One Day

The suggested Top Ten Tuesday topic for today is Books on My Winter 2022-2023 To-Read List. I find no point in doing this topic because, once I’ve composed and posted it, I never look at it again. I do set up a tentative reading list at the beginning of each month, but even that is

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

We Need Diverse Books Launches #BooksSaveLives Initiative Against Censorship We Need Diverse Books, an organization formed in 2014 “to advocate for diversity and inclusion in the publishing industry,” has launched its #BooksSaveLives initiative with “as much as $10,000 in grants to schools and libraries in underserved communities so they can purchase challenged and banned books

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

Top Ten Tuesday: 12 Books You Can Read in One Day

Today is a freebie for Top Ten Tuesday. If you’re now in a rush to knock off your reading goal for 2022, I’m here to help you out with this list of books you can read in one day or less. © 2022 by Mary Daniels Brown

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Discussion

My One-Month Anniversary on Mastodon

Related Post: Yesterday was my one-month anniversary on Mastodon. Because I had a terrible time crunch for most of November, I didn’t do as much exploring there as I had wanted to do. However, I’m starting to feel more at home there now. And I like it. Here are some reasons why: I’m beginning to

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Why I teach a course connecting Taylor Swift’s songs to the works of Shakespeare, Hitchcock and Plath Elizabeth Scala, professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin, explains how and why she created the course “The Taylor Swift Songbook,” an introductory English course. Categories: Literary Criticism, Literary History, Reading Why read old books?

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Book covers: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey; The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman; The Island by Adrian McKinty; The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave; The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda; Then She was Gone by Lisa Jewell; Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehand

6 Degrees of Separation

This month’s exercise begins with The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, set in Alaska in 1920. Jack and Mabel, a childless couple homesteading in the lonely wilderness, build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child has come to life. She hunts and roams the forest, like a creature out of a

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