October 2008

  • Staff Favorites: Non-Fiction Thrills.

    The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks by Susan Casey “The killing took place at dawn and as usual it was a decapitation, accomplished by a single vicious swipe.” Thus begins this intriguing look at the great white sharks that congregate every fallat the Farallon Islands, just… Continue reading

  • Horror Stories

    This is a great time of year to sit around and share ghost stories, as featured in this post from last week, but some readers prefer something a little stronger to properly curdle their blood. The distinction between ghost stories and other horror is nicely drawn in the Modern Library anthology Great Tales of Terror and… Continue reading

  • Too Much Coffee & Lots of Books: Missing the Gilmore Girls

    The Fall 2008 TV season has begun, and while there are many new and returning shows that look interesting, all I can think of is how much I miss The Gilmore Girls. Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, the show centered around the mother-daughter duo of Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and her namesake daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel) in… Continue reading

  • The Haunted Northwest

    Over the years, reference staff dealt with questions about ghost stories, preferably authentic, in the greater Seattle area. Some of the haunted locations which patrons wanted to research included the Manresa Castle in Port Townsend, the Martha Washington School for Girls which is now a park, the Pike Place Market, and the Harvard Exit theatre… Continue reading

  • Combining noir and urban fantasy

    In A Kiss Before the Apocalypse by Thomas E. Sniegoski, Death goes missing and the angels turn to the one person with the unique skill set they need to find him. Remy Chandler is a private investigator living in Boston and he isn’t all that surprised when some of God’s worker bees show up asking… Continue reading

  • Our Newly Enlarged French-Canadian Genealogy Collection

    The Seattle Public Library’s French-Canadian Genealogy Collection has expanded over three fold, thanks to the generosity of Carmen Westwater Anderson, who is a local French-Canadian researcher.  Many of the titles in her gift are not available anywhere else on the West Coast. This addition consists of over 180 Repertoires (indexes) to marriages, baptisms and burials from the Catholic… Continue reading

  • Gearing up for NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month

    November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a creative frenzy in which tens of thousands of ordinary people around the world sit down in coffee shops, at kitchen tables, and in classrooms to compose their own 50,000 word novels in 30 days. Nanowrimo is not about producing brilliant writing, but about finally putting that great… Continue reading

  • All That Is Sarah Polley

    “You pray that this is your life without you. You don’t know who or what you’re praying to, but you pray. You don’t even regret the life that you’re not gonna have, because by then you’ll be dead. And the dead don’t feel anything. Not even regret.” From her role as little Sara in The… Continue reading

  • Sea Monsters

    The Telegraph and Yahoo News have given me nightmares for life by reporting on a story involving a giant catfish in India with a taste for human flesh.  Yes, you read correctly.  Catfish. Human. Flesh.  The alleged Bunyanesque catfish is also known as a goonch which have been known to appear in the Great Kali… Continue reading

  • Julia Glass: Book Group Darling

    When Julia Glass’ first book, Three Junes, came out in 2002 and won the National Book Award, it became a book group trailblazer. Book groups everywhere rejoiced in a new author of contemporary fiction whose writing was fresh and confident and featured complex, memorable characters. You’d think that would be easy to do, but it… Continue reading

  • Halloween Costumes – DIY

    If you’re anything like me, and studies show you are, Halloween has already got you in a tizzy. The big question is how to outdo your friends and families with an amazing, clever and altogether unforgettable Halloween costume. As we all know, the best Halloween costumes are DIY (Do-it-Yourself) through and through. The venerable CityRag… Continue reading

  • Ghost Stories

    October is prime time for sharing scary stories, and people who might never think of checking out a horror novel stop by the library to find something to send a chill down their spine. I love chilling and thrilling tales, and read a lot of them as I select stories for the Thrilling Tales Adult Storytime,… Continue reading

  • Emerald City Search and Year of the Frog

    Here is another opportunity to celebrate frogs this year. The third annual Emerald City Search will take a frog theme in honor of The Year of the Frog. The goal is to find a special medallion hidden in a public place somewhere in Seattle, and whoever finds it first will win $2,500 in cash and… Continue reading

  • Nightstand Reads: Martha Brockenbrough’s essential books for writers

    It’s a little daunting to write a proper introduction here about Martha Brockenbrough. She is the founder of SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, as well as National Grammar Day (which received quite a lot of press attention). Her new book, Things That Make Us [Sic], which just came out today, takes… Continue reading

  • Is Political Satire Redundant?

    You know how when something’s on your mind, you start seeing it everywhere? I find this to be especially the case in the libary, where lately the red, white and blue covers of political fiction have been jumping off the shelves at me. Did you know that Senator Barbara Boxer wrote a novel – a… Continue reading

  • October Question of the Month: An irregular series

    The reference librarians at Seattle Public Library are pretty darn amazing. They don’t know everything, instead they know where to find everything. As part of an irregular series of posts we salute the talented and dedicated reference staff at your local library. Names and other identifying information have been removed from the questions we showcase.… Continue reading

  • Tom’s Midnight Garden

    I have just read again one of my very favorite children’s books, Tom’s Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce, a book that like all the best children’s books can be read with a great deal of pleasure by adults. I know that I find new depths every time I read it. It is a fantasy about… Continue reading

  • Left on the Shelf

    Nothing left on that DVD shelf at your local branch library?  You might want to take a closer look. I decided to try an experiment in serendipity with the DVD shelves at the branch where I work.  I would select a movie to watch from what was left on the shelf, and, to make things a… Continue reading