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.

Discussion

What Notes in the Margin Will Be Up to This Year

Instead of laying out an elaborate reading and blogging plan for 2024, I’m going to tell you what I’ll be focusing on.  It seems that, at the end of every year, I look back on whatever reading and writing goals I had set at the beginning of the year and document, in excruciating detail, how […]

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Introducing the 2024 Reading Log! I’ve been keeping track of the books I’ve read since May 1, 1991, when we got our first computer. I started with a database program, but, over that many years, software has changed multiple times. Every time a program would bite the dust, I’d export my data, then import it

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Collage of book covers: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce; Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz; The Drowning People by Richard Mason; Normal People by Sally Rooney; A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson; Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

6 Degrees of Separation

This month we start with Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, which was My Most Surprising Read of 2022. Zevin’s powerful novel made me consciously re-examine how I read fiction, and I began putting together a list of books that, at various times in my life, have changed the way I read fiction.

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Interior of a spaceship with a metallic robot looking at a hologram of a human. Text: National Science Fiction Day

It’s National Science Fiction Day!

(Image by Enrique from Pixabay) Just as residents of San Francisco warn “Don’t call it Frisco,” I have it on good authority that true science fiction fans insist “Don’t call it sci-fi.” The first science fiction I remember being enthralled by was the original Star Trek TV show (1966-1969). Later, with the advent of cable television, I discovered

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

How Women Writers Speculated Fictional Futures Free From Patriarchal Control “Lisa Yaszek on the Feminist History of Science Fiction” Since I started exploring Life Stories in Literature in the last few years, I’ve read more science fiction than I had read in my entire life before. Indeed, science fiction the ability to explore other possible

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A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: The Best Books I Read in 2023

The Best Books I Read in 2023

I was very picky about the books I chose to read this year. As a result, I read a lot of good books—so many that putting together this list was an agonizing process. In past years, I’ve kept my best books list to a total of 15, usually a top ten list plus five honorable

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A stack of 3 closed books, next to an open notebook on which rests a ballpoint pen. Text: Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

Life Stories in Literature: Links

Related Posts: 5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World “How habits of speech can shape our thoughts.” Language is the most prominent social construct of all; humans develop language to communicate with each other about how they experience the world and their place in it. Claire Cameron explains “the primary way

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Monthly calendar for December 2023, with title: My Big, Year-End Catch-Up Post

My Big, Year-End Catch-Up Post

Usually Notes in the Margin overflows with stories during December that deal with everything book-related. But we were traveling from mid-September to mid-December.  In an effort to catch up with everything I missed during that time, here’s a compendium of literary topics. The Ultimate Best Books of 2023 List “Reading All the Lists So You

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Books you can read in one day or less

Books You Can Read in One Day

Rose/House by Arkady Martine Clockwork by Philip Pullman  Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls The Last Book I Read in One Sitting: 16 Readers Share 20 Books You Can Read in One Sitting 7 Bite-Size Books That Pack a Powerful Punch 10 Epic Books Under 250 pages 10 One-Sitting Reads for a Well-Deserved Lazy Day Some

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