Brain Pickings is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large, who has also written for Wired UK, The New York Times, Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, and The Atlantic, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.

In this post, Maria brings together 8 books which she rates as the year's best on writing and creativity, quoting masters like Kurt Vonnegut, Neil Gaiman and Isabel Allende. With this post's trove of inspiration, you should be set for 2014.

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Egyptian Mayam Mahmoud stirred debate in the Middle East when she appeared at Arabs Got Talent's stage and rapped, defying the expectations of a veiled woman in this part of her world.

"It's got a lot of people talking about whether it's possible for a veiled girl, or even a girl, to do this," says Mahmoud, who says her veil is a personal choice and has little relevance to her music. "If a girl has a dream to work in a field where many girls don't work, or to do post-graduate study, or to work in a position higher than her husband – all these things often can't be done."

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