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.

Last Week’s Links

How Stephen King Made Pop Culture Weird If you’ve ever been to Austin, TX, you’ve seen the bumper stickers: “Keep Austin Weird.” Even my new hometown of Tacoma, WA, likes to call itself weird, as does Portland, OR, in the photo above. Lincoln Michel explains that these are not isolated occurrences: If you haven’t heard, […]

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13 Banned Books That Will Always Have a Place on Our Shelves

Off the Shelf celebrates Banned Book Week with a list of inspiring books that have been banned throughout literary history, including “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel. Visit BannedBooks.org and ALA.org for more information. Source: 13 Banned Books That Will Always Have a Place on Our Shelves This list contains some books challenged in recent years,

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What the List of Most Banned Books Says About Our Society’s Fears | TIME

Censors are increasingly focusing on books that represent diverse points of view Source: What the List of Most Banned Books Says About Our Society’s Fears | TIME   In honor of Banned Books Week, Time looks at how the focus of book challenges has changed over the past several years.

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woman reading

Articles That Caught My Eye Last Week

These are the most interesting of the articles I spent time with last week. Q&A: CHRISTINE SNEED DISCUSSES HER COMPELLING STORY COLLECTION ABOUT THE LURE OF FAME In this interview fiction writer Christine Sneed, whose latest work is the story collection The Virginity of Famous Men, discusses why fame and our human flaws are good

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September is National Translation Month (NTM) — Celebrating Writing in Translation

Celebrating Writing in Translation Language is a way to express the human experience, yet it also presents communication barriers. With the efforts of accomplished translators, however, those barriers can be overcome to foster artistic unity across linguistic boundaries. Source: National Translation Month (NTM) — Celebrating Writing in Translation

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man reading a big book

Last Week’s Links

ALAN MOORE GOES (VERY VERY) BIG WITH JERUSALEM Alan Moore’s novel Jerusalem weighs in at more than 1,200 pages. Joshua Zajdman has been carrying it around for a while, and people’s questions and comments about its size have triggered him to reflect: why are “big books” perceived so differently? How long have “big books” been

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

Under Pamela Paul, a New Books Desk Takes Shape at the ’Times’ One of the book resources I look at most often is coverage by The New York Times. In this article Publishers Weekly looks at recent changes in the way the paper covers book-related news: In mid August, New York Times executive editor Dean

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

As Far As Your Brain Is Concerned, Audiobooks Are Not ‘Cheating’ I love audiobooks; they enable me to read while plodding along on the treadmill or doing chores around the house. I’ve always thought that listening to a book instead of reading it is not cheating as long as I listen to the unabridged version.

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Upcoming books-to-movies adaptations: Hope springs eternal for this critic | The Seattle Times

Seattle Times movie critic Moira Macdonald has high hopes for these upcoming movie adaptations of books, including the film version of “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” and “The Girl on the Train.” Source: Upcoming books-to-movies adaptations: Hope springs eternal for this critic | The Seattle Times To her second list I’d add the film

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Rich season of fiction expected this fall

Fall is the time for “big books,” whatever the page length, and some of the top fiction authors from around the world have new works coming, including Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Rabih Alameddine, Emma Donoghue, Jonathan Safran Foer and Michael Chabon. Ann Patchett, owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee,

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