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.

The Classics Club

The Classics Spin #18

The Classics Spin #18 I love these Classics Spins because they get me reading the books on my list when I might otherwise avoid them. Here’s how it works: I list 20 books here that I have yet to read from my original list of 50+ classics. On Wednesday, August 1, the Classics Club will […]

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Missing Malcolm X Writings, Long a Mystery, Are Sold – The New York Times

The title page for an unpublished manuscript related to Malcolm X’s autobiography, one of several long-rumored fragments that were sold on Thursday.CreditJeenah Moon for The New York Times By Jennifer Schuessler July 26, 2018 16 For a quarter century, they have been the stuff of myth among scholars: three missing chapters from “The Autobiography of

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

What I’ve been reading around the web recently. Can Reading Make You Happier? An interesting history of bibliotherapy, or the use of reading to help “people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence.” For all avid readers who have been self-medicating with great books their entire lives, it comes as no surprise that reading

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

100 Books to Read Before You Die When you find yourself not knowing what book to pick up next, here’s a list that contains “a mix of modern fiction, true stories, and timeless classics.” The deep roots of writing Was writing invented for accounting and administration or did it evolve from religious movements, sorcery and

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

John Irving, The Art of Fiction No. 93 I’m not a twentieth-century novelist, I’m not modern, and certainly not postmodern. I follow the form of the nineteenth-century novel; that was the century that produced the models of the form. I’m old-fashioned, a storyteller. I’m not an analyst and I’m not an intellectual. WHICH BOOKS DO

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Author Gillian Flynn on “Sharp Objects”

The HBO adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel Sharp Objects begins tonight (July 8, 2018). “To me,” she says, “Sharp Objects is a Western. The gunslinger goes back to his town to discover it’s been taken over by the bad guys. And she’s gotta get rid of all the bad stuff. The gunslinger who’s arrived to

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Last Week's Links

Internet reading that caught my eye over the past week. Megan Abbott’s Bloodthirsty Murderesses The thriller writer probes the psychological underpinnings of female rage. Because, Abbott says, “girls are darker than boys.” New Black Gothic Sheri-Marie Harrison, associate professor of English at the University of Missouri, explains what she calls the new black Gothic in

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

These are the stories from the internet that piqued my interest over the last week. Why We Don’t Read, Revisited Caleb Crain, in a follow-up to a decade-old report on Americans’ reading habits, reports that the time Americans spend reading continues to decline. “Television, rather than the Internet, likely remains the primary force distracting Americans

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Women’s Prize for Fiction Revealing the 2018 Women’s Prize shortlist… – Women’s Prize for Fiction

Women’s Prize for Fiction Revealing the 2018 Women’s Prize shortlist… – Women’s Prize for Fiction Read More »

12 Books You to Read Before Seeing the Movies this Spring | Off the Shelf

A sneak preview of the exciting book-to-film adaptations coming to theaters this spring. Source: 12 Books You to Read Before Seeing the Movies this Spring | Off the Shelf

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