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.

Why Salman Rushdie believes the books we love ‘make us who we are’ Salman Rushdie made his name as a novelist, but he is also one of our finest literary critics and defenders of the importance of… – Everything Shortform – Medium

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Salman Rushdie made his name as a novelist, but he is also one of our finest literary critics and defenders of the importance of books… “I believe that the books and stories we fall in love with make us who we are, or, not to claim too much, that the act of falling in love […]

Why Salman Rushdie believes the books we love ‘make us who we are’ Salman Rushdie made his name as a novelist, but he is also one of our finest literary critics and defenders of the importance of… – Everything Shortform – Medium Read More »

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John Williams joins The [Washington] Post as books editor John will lead our award-winning nonfiction and fiction books team, hiring new writers and working with colleagues to reach new audiences. We believe in books coverage that revels in the life of the mind and big ideas and is also consumer-oriented, giving book lovers the information

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Collage of book covers: The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré , The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Circe by Madeline Miller, The Pigman by Paul Zindel

6 Degrees of Separation

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This month we begin with The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize. Even before Kate last month announced it as this month’s starting point, I had it on my list of books I wanted to read. So I had good intentions of having finished it before starting

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On Tech: The books merger that’s about Amazon

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The U.S. government is suing to stop the book publisher Penguin Random House from buying a competitor, Simon & Schuster. The government says that the merger, which will shrink the number of large American publishers of mass-market books from five to four, will hurt some authors by reducing competition for their books. Source: On Tech:

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Gilbert Cruz Is Our Next Books Editor The New York Times has announced its new book editor, “veteran culture editor” Gilbert Cruz: Gilbert spent the past four years bringing important changes to our arts report . . . Now he’ll move to Books to focus his energies on three important pillars of coverage. The first

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stack of books and open notebook. Label: Quotation

Quotation: Nonlinear Time

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“Humans love linear time because it’s comforting. But if you push linear time to the side over there (and give it a graham cracker, so it’s okay) then I was fascinated by the idea that epics might be in dialogue with each other rather than that old tired out notion that history is the past

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Map of Washington State, USA

Road Trip!

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My husband and I have just returned from a two-week road trip through central and southern Washington State. We retired to Tacoma, WA, on the coast, from St. Louis in 2013. Since then, we’ve slowly (with the two-year hiatus of COVID-19) been exploring other areas of the state.  The more inland parts of the state

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

#TopTenTuesday    Books on My TBR Shelves That I STILL Haven’t Read

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Today’s topic is Books From My Past Seasonal TBR Posts I STILL Haven’t Read. I haven’t been participating in Top Ten Tuesday to have a bunch of past seasonal reading posts, so I’m just going to tell you some of the books that have been on my TBR shelves for a long time and are

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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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