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.

Introducing Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes” for Books | Literary Hub

Book News, Book Recommendations / By /

Book Marks will showcase critics from the most important and active outlets of literary journalism in America, aggregating reviews from over 70 sources—newspapers, magazines, and websites—and averaging them into a letter grade, as well as linking back to their source. Each book’s cumulative grade functions as both a general critical assessment, and, more significantly, as […]

Introducing Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes” for Books | Literary Hub Read More »

The Classics Club

The Classics Spin #13

The Classics Club / By /

The Classics Spin #13 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. Tomorrow, June 6, the Classics Club will announce

The Classics Spin #13 Read More »

Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

Last Week's Links / By /

Recent Articles on Books, Authors, and All Things Literary Middle Eastern Writers Find Refuge in the Dystopian Novel Because literature reflects the culture that produces it: Five years after the popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere, a bleak, apocalyptic strain of post-revolutionary literature has taken root in the region. Some writers are using

Last Week’s Links Read More »

woman reading

Books I Finished in May

Personal, Review / By /

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Original publication date: 1857 Translated by Lydia Davis (Penguin Books, 2010) Highly recommended Madame Bovary is a seminal work in the rise of literary realism: an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. Although realism is not limited to any one century or group of writers,

Books I Finished in May Read More »

Man Booker International Prize goes to ‘The Vegetarian’ – CNN.com

Awards & Prizes / By /

South Korean author Han Kang won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize on Monday for “The Vegetarian,” a novel about a “completely unremarkable” woman, to use the book’s description, who subverts societal norms including, in a nod to the title, giving up eating meat. Source: Man Booker International Prize goes to ‘The Vegetarian’ – CNN.com

Man Booker International Prize goes to ‘The Vegetarian’ – CNN.com Read More »

On Novels and Novelists

Last Week’s Links

Last Week's Links, On Novels and Novelists / By / / , ,

Recent articles on novels and novelists THE WILDS OF MONTANA MIGHT BE THE SCARIEST CHARACTER OF ALL Antonia Malchik writes of the role of setting in Karin Salvalaggio’s mystery novels: The northwest Montana brought to life in Karin Salvalaggio’s mystery novels has a great deal in common with Hansel and Gretel’s unkind world. Silent, pine-filled

Last Week’s Links Read More »

The Classics Club

Review: “A Canticle for Leibowitz”

Fiction, Review, The Classics Club / By /

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. © 1959 This book was popular when I was in college back in the late 1960s. I never got around to reading it back then, and the same mass market paperback has been kicking around on my bookshelves ever since then. It won the 1961 Hugo

Review: “A Canticle for Leibowitz” Read More »

man reading a big book

5 Nonfiction Big Books I Loved

Big Books, Book Recommendations, List, Nonfiction / By / / , , , ,

Related Posts: 10 Big Books I Have Read & Loved 6 Big Books I Keep Meaning to Reread 6 Big Books on My Reading List 2 Big Books That Disappointed Me Since I read a lot more fiction than nonfiction, it’s not surprising that all of my earlier Big Books lists have included only novels.

5 Nonfiction Big Books I Loved Read More »

Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

Last Week's Links / By /

Recent articles on books, authors, and all things literary Real, Realist, Realistic, and False This article drew my attention because of my interest in memoir. One perennial question about memoirs is how much of the content is true, and the related question, when, if ever, it’s permissible to make up things in memoir. But here

Last Week’s Links Read More »

On Novels and Novelists

On Novels and Novelists

On Novels and Novelists / By / / , , ,

A Little Life author Hanya Yanagihara: ’Writing can be lonely’ In an article for the U.K. publication Telegraph, Hanya Yanagihara discusses her life and the books that have influenced her: My first book, The People in the Trees, took 18 years to write, largely because there were years when I wrote nothing. But A Little

On Novels and Novelists Read More »

Scroll to Top