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.

Monday Miscellany

Hogwarts Is in Your Head, Harry: Conspiracy Theories About Literature Emily Temple weighs in over at The Atlantic: Sherlock Holmes and Watson are lovers, Winnie the Pooh is a mental-illness allegory, and other theories that might forever alter your favorite books. There was a pretty fascinating article over at Salon earlier this month, in which […]

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Applegate, Klassen, Lake Win Newbery, Caldecott, Printz

Applegate, Klassen, Lake Win Newbery, Caldecott, Printz Katherine Applegate has won the 2013 Newbery Medal for The One and Only Ivan (Harper), a novel narrated by a silverback gorilla that lives in an ill-run roadside attraction with other performing animals; the book was edited by Anne Hoppe. Jon Klassen has won the 2013 Randolph Caldecott

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Monday Miscellany

Hemingway family mental illness explored in new film Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, struggled with depression throughout his life before committing suicide in 1961. In this article from CNN, his gradddaughter, Mariel Hemingway, discusses a new documentary about the family that she hopes will increase awareness of and allow

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Monday Miscellany

Making Appointments With (Fictional) Doctors A fictional M.D. will not reduce your fever, but she or he might reduce your boredom. That’s because many medical protagonists — whether general practitioners or something else — are quite interesting. They’re often not liberal arts types, but, heck, non-liberal arts types can be compelling characters, too. Also of

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Monday Miscellany

The discovery of Mars in literature David Seed, author of Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction, explains why the red planet has inspired so much speculative fiction. Reasons to Re-Joyce Is literary fiction really a dying breed? In The New York Times Darin Strauss argues that it is not: So things might look pretty bad. But

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And the Golden Hatchet goes to. . .

And the Golden Hatchet goes to … – latimes.com There’s a certain joy that comes with reading a great literary takedown, the kind of mean but intelligent and precise review that eviscerates the pretensions and the sloppiness of a truly awful book. Over in Britain, they think of a good pan as a kind of

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Monday Miscellany

Happy New Year! And welcome back. Read ahead for 2013 Jane Sullivan of Australia’s The Age clues us in on books (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) to be published this year. Announcing the 2013 Tournament of Books To add to your March madness: The ToB is an annual springtime event here at the Morning News, where

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