Brain Pickings 2019

The Best of Brain Pickings 2019

Love, poetry, friendship, solitude, and lots of trees.

BY MARIA POPOVA

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 trees — and how they illuminate the things that help me, and perhaps you, survive. Thrive, even.