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.

Banner: Celebrate Banned Books Week, September 18-24, 2022 (from the American Library Association). Several brightly colored birds fly over a muted background of open books.

Banned Books Week 2022

The theme for Banned Books Week 2022 is “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.” For More Information BookRiot has put together an extensive list of information and suggestions on how you can advocate for literacy and the freedom to read during this year’s Banned Books Week: A Banned Books Week Action List: Book Censorship News, […]

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

American Library Association’s New Book Censorship Data Released in Advance of Banned Books Week As you have probably already guessed, the statistics are pretty grim. Category: Censorship Series on Historical Fiction from The Atlantic On the occasion of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, The Atlantic carries a series of feature articles about historical fiction.

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

#TopTenTuesday Books with Geographical Terms in the Title

The topic for this week is Books with Geographical Terms in the Title (for example: mountain, island, latitude/longitude, ash, bay, beach, border, canyon, cape, city, cliff, coast, country, desert, epicenter, hamlet, highway, jungle, ocean, park, sea, shore, tide, valley, etc.) Here are 11 novels from my reading database. Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark The Island

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

4 Essential Books About Queen Elizabeth II Talk about life stories. Queen Elizabeth II certainly had one. Kirkus Reviews suggests some books for those of us wanting to read about it. Reimagining the Homeland Through Speculative Fiction Speculative fiction as a genre is conducive to diasporic literature, particularly for Palestinian writers, because it combines several

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stack of books and open notebook. Label: Quotation

Peter Straub on Horror

“. . . telling stories and writing fiction is a way of managing and exploring my own impulses and emotions. I’m not at the mercy of my terrors, my shame. I push the dredged-up emotions into shapes that are enjoyable in the end, even if their content seems violent or disturbing.” — novelist and poet

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Stack of books on left; notebook open to blank page with pen lying on top on the right

#TopTenTuesday 20 Pandemic Reviews I Have Yet to Write

(Feature photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash) Today’s assigned topic is Books I Loved So Much I Had to Get a Copy for My Personal Library. But I don’t work that way. If I’m reading a library book, I take the notes I’ll need from the book before I return it. I don’t think just

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

5 Books that Celebrate Books This is a list of stories that pay homage to the world of books; whether through the comfort and sanctuary of libraries, the careful crafting of a narrative, or the mysticism and power of books themselves, each contain different versions of the same awe and appreciation of words, stories and

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Book covers: The Pigman by Paul Zindel, I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb, A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss

6 Degrees of Separation

This month’s assignment is to start with the book that we ended with last month. That was The Pig Man by Paul Zindel, which I described as a “seminal work in the movement to portray teenagers and their lives realistically (well before the designation young adult literature came into use).” first degree Another author who

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Stack of 5 books lying horizontally: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill, Delphi by Clare Pollard, The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb, Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart, Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark

When All Your Library Holds Come in Simultaneously

My plan was to make September my month of rereading, but I’ll have to adjust my schedule. I don’t think I’ve ever before hit a jackpot like this one. And those two chunks at the bottom of the pile weigh in at 400 + 575 pages.

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feature: Life Stories in Literature

#TopTenTuesday   Multigenerational Family Dramas 

Today’s assigned topic is a freebie related to school. But I’ve decided to go off on a tangent that will help me set up my next reading project. And home is at the heart of much of the fiction that I most like to read. Novels that treat both the joys and the sorrows that

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