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Hello Reader! This is the annual recap of The Marginalian by Maria Popova. The weekly newsletter remains on its regular pulse-beat and will be with you at the usual time. If you missed them, here are my favorite children's books and favorite grownup books of the year. And if my labor of love enriches your life in any way, please consider supporting it with a donation — for seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive (as have I) thanks to reader patronage. If you already donate: I appreciate you more than you know.

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Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023

Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives.

In accordance with the annual tradition, here is the best of The Marginalian in hindsight — a Venn diagram of what I most loved writing and what readers most loved reading, spanning from the outermost reaches of the universe where physics probes the nature of reality to the innermost regions of being where poems reckon with the truest truths.

17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian

Read it here.

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The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother

Read it here.

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How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty

Read it here.

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The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter to Life

Read it here.

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The Seamstress Who Solved the Ancient Mystery of the Argonaut, Pioneered the Aquarium, and Laid the Groundwork for the Study of Octopus Intelligence

Read it here.

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The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul

Read it here.

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Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism

Read it here.

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Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders

Read it here.

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Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians

Read it here.

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How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön

Read it here.

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The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited

Read it here.

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The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love

Read it here.

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Nick Cave on the Art of Growing Older

Read it here.

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The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself

Read it here.

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How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love

Read it here.

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Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions

Read it here.

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Center of the Universe: Non-Speaking Autistic Poet Hannah Emerson’s Extraordinary Poem About How to Be Reborn Each Day

Read it here.

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The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem About the Meaning and Measure of Enough

Read it here.

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Spell Against Indifference

Read it here.

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bell hooks on Love

Read it here.

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How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education

Read it here.

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Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird

Read it here.

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How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us

Read it here.

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This year, I spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.

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Need to cancel an existing donation? (It's okay — life changes course. I treasure your kindness and appreciate your support for as long as it lasted.) You can do so on this page.

A SMALL, DELIGHTFUL SIDE PROJECT:

Uncommon Presents from the Past: Gifts for the Science-Lover and Nature-Ecstatic in Your Life, Benefitting the Nature Conservancy

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