I am obsessed with Maria Popova’s ingenious, fascinating, fun, and just plain awesome blog, Brainpickings. If you haven’t heard of it, you are missing out. She is so original, hip, and brilliant that you feel inspired just being in her web presence. A self-described “interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large,” the blog is a “human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why, bringing you things you didn’t know you were interested in — until you are.” Impossibly cool.

She is fond of presenting lists, particularly of the best books on a certain topic. Recent examples: “9 Books to Help You Read More and Write Better,” “7 Must-Read Books on the Art and Science of Happiness,” “7 Obscure Children’s Books by Famous Authors of Adult Literature,” “Why We Love: 5 Books on the Psychology of Love,” and “7 Must-Read Books on Music, Emotion, and the Brain.” She also sometimes just offers up a really great read that we should all know about–the other day it was Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to their Children. [Read more…]