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.

Collage of book covers: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck; A Time to Kill by John Grisham; Killing Time by Caleb Carr; Stories are Weapons by Annalee Newitz; Tell Me a Story by Daniel Taylor; The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid; Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

6 Degrees of Separation: On Time and Storytelling

This month we start with the 2024 winner of the International Booker Prize, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Michael Hofmann). Jenny Erpenbeck has created an unforgettably compelling masterpiece with Kairos. The story of a romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s: the passionate yet difficult long-running affair of Katharina and […]

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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

Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

Writing About Yourself Isn’t Inherently Selfish Novelist Tope Folarin examines the work of French novelist Édouard Louis. But first, Folarin quotes from The Good Story, a 2015 book by the Nobel Prize–winning novelist J. M. Coetzee, co-authored with Arabella Kurtz, a clinical psychologist. Folarin calls The Good Story “a searching, erudite treatise about the stories

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ALA 2024: Trevor Noah, Taraji P. Henson to Appear at ALA Annual Conference in San Diego

Amid ongoing attacks on libraries and the freedom to read, a strong professional program and an excellent slate of speakers will showcase the power of libraries. Source: ALA 2024: Trevor Noah, Taraji P. Henson to Appear at ALA Annual Conference in San Diego

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

25 Books Your High School English Teacher Was Right to Assign Veronica Booth, a lifestyle and culture writer from Boston, MA, explains that “reading important literary works at a young age can shape your perspective of the world, your empathy toward others, and your beliefs.” Her list of books that underscore her point includes The

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A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: 12 Novels Thata Changed How I Read Fiction

#12 “Trust” by Hernan Diaz

Related Posts: Trust by Hernan Diaz © 2022 Date read: 1/31/2023 The four-part structure was initially what drew me to Trust. By the time I got to this novel, I was used to novels divided into sections that presented either various points of view or various time periods. But Trust was different from other novels

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