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Brain Pickings

Welcome Hello Jay! This is a special annual edition of the Brain Pickings newsletter by Maria Popova. The regular Sunday edition will be with you predictably and reliably this weekend. If you missed the two annual specials of the year's loveliest children's books and overall favorite books, they are here and here. And if you find any value and joy in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation – this year, like every year for the past thirteen, I have invested countless hours and tremendous resources in Brain Pickings, and every little bit of support helps keep it going. If you already donate: THANK YOU.

The Best of Brain Pickings 2019

In this annual review, following the annual selections of the year’s loveliest children’s books and overall favorite books, “best” is as usual a composite measure of what I most enjoyed thinking and writing about over the course of the year, and what you most ardently read and shared.

It has been curious to observe, in this most difficult year of my life, the patterns that emerge — strong women’s voices, the healing power of nature, of poetry, and of kindness; the necessity of unselfish love, of friendship, and of solitude; and lots and lots and lots of tress — and how they illuminate the things that help me, and perhaps you, survive. Thrive, even.

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Enjoy, and may we face the coming year with the steady serenity of a tree — that supreme lover of light, always reaching both higher and deeper, rooted in a network of kinship and ringed by a more patient view of time.

The More Loving One: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads W.H. Auden’s Sublime Ode to Our Unrequited Love for the Universe

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13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings

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The Healing Power of Gardens: Oliver Sacks on the Psychological and Physiological Consolations of Nature

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Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss

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Trees at Night: Stunning Rorschach Silhouettes from the 1920s

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I Like You: An Almost Unbearably Lovely Vintage Illustrated Ode to Friendship

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Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself

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After Silence: Amanda Palmer Reads Neil Gaiman’s Stunning Poem Celebrating Rachel Carson’s Legacy of Culture-Shifting Courage

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Salvation by Words: Iris Murdoch on Language as a Vehicle of Truth and Art as a Force of Resistance to Tyranny

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Rebecca Solnit’s Lovely Letter to Children About How Books Solace, Empower, and Transform Us

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Planting Trees as Resistance and Empowerment: The Remarkable Illustrated Story of Wangari Maathai, the First African Woman to Win the Nobel Peace Prize

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Rachel Carson’s Bittersweet Farewell to the World: Timeless Advice to the Next Generations from the Woman Who Catalyzed the Environmental Movement

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Hermann Hesse on Solitude, the Value of Hardship, the Courage to Be Yourself, and How to Find Your Destiny

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“Little Prince” Author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on Losing a Friend

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Leo Tolstoy on Kindness and the Measure of Love

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On Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran

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Middle Age and the Art of Self-Renewal: An Extraordinary Letter from Pioneering Education Reformer Elizabeth Peabody

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The Lost Words: An Illustrated Dictionary of Poetic Spells Reclaiming the Language of Nature

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The Fascinating Science of How Trees Communicate, Animated

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Harriet Hosmer on Art and Ambition: The World’s First Successful Woman Sculptor on What It Takes to Be a Great Artist

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Is There a God? Stephen Hawking Gives the Definitive Answer to the Eternal Question

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Year of the Monkey: Patti Smith on Dreams, Loss, Love, and Mending the Broken Realities of Life

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Amanda Palmer Reads “When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver

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The Astronomical Art of Maria Clara Eimmart: Stunning 17th-Century Drawings of Comets, Planets, and Moon Phases by a Self-Taught Artist and Astronomer

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You Can’t Have It All

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My Heart: An Emotional Intelligence Primer in the Form of an Uncommonly Tender Illustrated Poem About Our Capacity for Love

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In 2019, the 13th year of Brain Pickings, I poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into this labor of love, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and solace here this year, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU.

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