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.

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The 14 Literary Newsletters You Need in Your Inbox Ceillie Clark-Keane, a writer living in Boston, suggests 14 of her “favorite literary newsletters, the ones that I love seeing in my inbox as an excuse to sit for a minute and think about books, writing, and reading.” Categories: Author News, Book Recommendations, Reading, Writing The […]

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10 Books You Pretend to Have Read (And Why You Should Really Read Them) Gizmodo Australia: We asked some of our favourite writers, and they told us the 10 classic books that everyone pretends to have read,  and why you should actually read them. From Asimov to Pynchon, science fiction contains some fantastic, ambitious works

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Discussion

Discussion: “Gone Girl” 10 Years Later

Introductory Discussion June 2022 marked the tenth anniversary of Gillian Flynn’s mega blockbuster novel Gone Girl. This anniversary prompted many looks back at the novel’s significance; for example: “A master class in marital manipulation, the influence of the novel continues to cascade through the category; to this day, every other thriller is pitched as “Gone

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With Rising Book Bans, Librarians Have Come Under Attack “Caustic fights over which books belong on the shelves have put librarians at the center of a bitter and widening culture war.” Not just books, but librarians themselves, have been verbally threatened and attacked as the number of censorship attacks increases across the U.S. Categories: Censorship,

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older adults in literature

Quotation: Older Adults in Literature

Irene was eighty years old, but she didn’t feel eighty. Not just because she was, sprained ankle notwithstanding, a spritely, trim woman, but because it was impossible to feel eighty. Nobody felt eighty. When Irene considered it, she thought that she probably felt somewhere around thirty-five. Forty, maybe. That was a good age to feel,

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

#TopTenTuesday  Most Anticipated Books Releasing In the Second Half of 2022

Here are the top ten books I’m looking forward to that will be published between July 1 and December 31 2022.  Listed in order of publication. The It Girl by Ruth Ware Publication date: July 12 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of One by One returns with an unputdownable mystery following a woman

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Ten Books to Understand the Abortion Debate in the United States “Nearly 50 years ago, the Supreme Court legalized abortion. Now that the court has overturned Roe v. Wade, here are 10 books that outline the history and the terms of the debate.” Joshua Prager put this list together for the New York Times. Here’s

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Book covers: Wintering by Katherine May, Winter by Ali Smith, Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell, In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane, I'll Be You by Janelle Brown

6 Degrees of Separation: Of Winters and Motherhood

This month’s starting point is Wintering by Katherine May: “ Wintering is a poignant and comforting meditation on the fallow periods of life, times when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our

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

#TopTenTuesday Books On My Summer 2022 To-Read List

Related Post: Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Spring 2022 TBR My first Top Ten Tuesday, back in March, was Books On My Spring 2022 TBR. I knew at the time I put the list together that creating it was an exercise in futility, since other books would probably come along that begged to be

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9 Unputdownable Historical Fiction Picks for Pride Month Off the Shelf recommends “some of the most moving, passionate, and unputdownable works of queer historical fiction, whisking us from the streets of Victorian London to ancient Greece, gilded New York City, and beyond.” Categories: Book Recommendations, Fiction Summer reading: 5 books on the joys and challenges

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