October 2011

  • Nightstand Reads: Karen Gaudette

    As a writer, food lover and former reporter, I look to cookbooks as entry points to a variety of cultures and eras. Ever wonder why Southern cookbooks devote so many pages to dessert? One trip to my husband’s grandmother’s church social in middle Tennessee, with its bountiful tables of cakes and pies, neatly answered that… Continue reading

  • John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice: A Dad’s Appreciation

    As an avid science fiction and fantasy reader, and as a children’s librarian, I’ve read my share of wonderful and intriguing stories. But nothing I’ve read before has been as deeply satisfying as John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series. For the young, or not so young, reader craving action Flanagan’s books are hard to beat. And… Continue reading

  • Top Trends: The Irresistible “-ist” List

    When you work at a library, some literary trends aren’t that hard to spot: you tend to trip over them. A while back we started seeing lobsters everywhere, which last year were replaced by tigers. We’ve done whole book displays over covers featuring just feet, or headless women. (One avid reader in Montreal is especially gifted at keeping an… Continue reading

  • Meaning of Pink in October

    Pink is all over. We now even get library check-out receipts in pink. That is because October is “National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” Many events like walking, running, fundraising, and lectures are going on through the month of October. There is even an organization called National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM) which works to promote… Continue reading

  • Nightstand Reads: Matthew Amster-Burton

    When I’m sick, sad, or don’t know what to eat for lunch, I always turn to Asian food for comfort. Usually it’s some kind of spicy noodles, like pad Thai or the Tetsu Hell Fire dipping ramen at Samurai noodle, a dish you can’t eat without looking like a barbarian. Similarly, when I wander into… Continue reading

  • A book group you can join in your PJs

    Can we talk about book groups? Why is it so hard to find a good one? I mean, it’s easy to join a book group at a book store or a library, but they may be a bit impersonal, they rarely serve food or drinks, and there’s always that one person who talks too much.… Continue reading

  • Grit, Twang, Soul: Your Southern roots are showing.

    Last night, watching Jim White cruising the fecund, salvation-starved backroads of the deep South in Searching for the Wrong-eyed Jesus, I kept hazily reflecting back on my own Southern childhood. My folks and I came north to Seattle when I was just four years old. From San Francisco. Yet White’s musing, music-filled backroads travelogue is suffused with… Continue reading

  • Fear and Loathing in the Library

    While I do enjoy a good old fashioned Gothic ghost story from time to time, I have to come out of the closet with a deep, dark secret: I like my horror as bloody, gruesome and gory as possible. I like it when bones are broken, heads are severed and every excruciating detail of the… Continue reading

  • Seattle Camera Club’s Vision of Beauty

    The beauty of our city, and its surroundings — how often have these been noted and commented on? Every fine day we get another opportunity to be grateful for Seattle’s location, and every rainy or cloudy day, the beauty is still present but cloaked in different covering. We’re lucky to be reminded of this simple… Continue reading

  • An open mind to reading

    Before working at the library, I admittedly had a narrow mind as far as my book choices. Since I am far beyond my teenage years, I stuck to adult fiction/non fiction. I am happy to report that I have broadened my horizons and now am open to all book collections.  One great surprise was discovering how many “J” (as… Continue reading

  • Nightstand Reads: Greg Atkinson

    As a food writer, I use words and letters almost without thinking. Just as whisks, rolling pins, pots and pans are incidental to the actual foodstuffs with which they interface, so words and letters, paragraphs and sentences are just a means to an end. The end is whatever meaning I hope they will eventually convey… Continue reading

  • October Question of the Month – an irregular series

    Hi. I’m starting a preschool business in North Seattle. I need help getting answers to these questions: $ spent in US on private preschools; $ spent locally on private preschools; % growth last year. Also, growth potential, trends in the industry, and my main competitors’ products and pricing. Thank-you for your help! Thank you for… Continue reading

  • What’s new in children’s picture books

    Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr. Bill Martin Jr. and Lois Ehlert team up to make a wonderful read aloud about nature and counting. Where will these ten little caterpillars venture to in the garden of life and what will happen to them?   Caveman, A B.C. Story by Janee Trasler Experience adventure, humor,… Continue reading

  • Who is Fantômas?

    “Fantômas.”                 “What did you say?” “I said: Fantômas.”                 “And what does that mean?” “Nothing…Everything!”                  “But what is it?” “Nobody….and yet, yes, it is somebody!”                  “And what does the somebody do?” “Spreads terror!” A century ago, these words unleashed reign of terror upon the literary world which continues to this day. It was… Continue reading

  • When Langston Came to Town

    It is always interesting to think of famous people walking the streets of our city.  That is the idea behind the Douglass-Truth Branch’s exhibit ‘When Langston Came to Town’. It memorializes the day in May, 1932, when Langston Hughes drove into Seattle for an author program at the First AME Church. The Seattle Times called… Continue reading

  • The Reading Dead: A Zombie literary salon.

    AMC’s The Walking Dead has risen again for a second season, but the aisles of your local library are already crowded with zombies, including Robert Kirkman’s original graphic novel series upon which the show is based (and what isn’t based on graphic novels at this point?) and the first season on DVD.   For anyone who thought the zombie craze was so 2009,… Continue reading

  • A very Muppet library

    There is a new Muppet movie, called The Muppets, coming out in November 2011 and I am equal parts excited and apprehensive. I want it to be good. I want it to have that zany spark I remember from the original Muppet productions—a masterful combination of keen adult humor and childish goodwill without the saccharine… Continue reading

  • Wild and Green

    During the recession of my youth there was one summer when I ate a lot of wild greens gathered in what was then a very new Discovery Park. My favorite was miner’s lettuce in salads, which would probably be even tastier now that I can afford the EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) to dress it.… Continue reading