Arts & Culture

  • Music at the Library in April

    The Library’s April programs offer previews of ballet and opera, and a live music concert. All programs are in the Microsoft Auditorium, First Floor, Central Library. Pacific Northwest Ballet Preview: Kent Stowell’s Swan Lake 12– 1 p.m., Tuesday, April 7 Discover Kent Stowell’s exquisite choreography and Tchaikovsky’s beautifully expressive music in a preview of Pacific… Continue reading

  • Eat This Book!

    If you haven’t yet heard about the Seattle Edible Book Festival, prepare to be delighted. This annual event scheduled for “around April 1” each year is our local chapter of the International Edible Book Festival — no, this is better — Le Festival International Du Livre Mangeable! Yes, there are people all over the world doing this: Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, France,… Continue reading

  • The Tudors

    I have become obsessed with the Tudors. It all started when I checked out the DVD set of the first season of the Showtime series The Tudors, which stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers as King Henry VIII, from the Central Library right before the big snowstorm this past December. My husband and I spent several evenings… Continue reading

  • The Visitor and Little Bee

    Two of the most powerful stories that I recently encountered were stories about immigrants and refugees. One was in a film and the other was a novel, but both left a strong impression on me. In the film, The Visitor, a widowed, burnt-out professor in Connecticut, Walter Vale, (played to perfection by Richard Jenkins, who… Continue reading

  • Reminds Me Of Garden State

    “Maybe that’s all family really is a group of people who miss the same imaginary place.” Ever since Garden State came out I’ve been trying to recreate the sensation I got when I saw that movie for the very first time. You know the laughing, crying, not wanting the story to end. Here are just… Continue reading

  • My Night with Greg Kinnear

    “There is a story about the Greek Gods; they were bored so they invented human beings, but they were still bored so they invented love, then they weren’t bored any longer. So they decided to try love for themselves. And finally, they invented laughter, so they could stand it.” I put two promising titles on… Continue reading

  • Music at the Library in March

    In a previous post we gave you an overview of the many arts programs that take place every month at the Library. Now I would like to tell you about three exciting musical events that are coming up in March.  All these programs take place in the Central Library, Microsoft Auditorium.  Check the Library Calendar… Continue reading

  • My iPod, the best present ever!

    Ah, what could be better than young love? How about young gadget love! Libraries are all about transformation and discovery, and we regularly enjoy our patrons’ enthusiasm as they discover new ways of experiencing life and culture. This account of one librarian’s thrilling honeymoon with her new iPod will bring back fond memories for some, and perhaps tempt… Continue reading

  • Celebrating Honest Abe

    Abraham Lincoln, nicknamed “Honest Abe” was born 200 years ago today, and his impact on our nation is enduring.  We’ve heard much about him recently, as President Obama was sworn in using his Bible, and did a pre-inaugural train trip along the same route as his predecessor.  An earlier post mentioned the commonality between the… Continue reading

  • Music at the Library

    We have a lot of programs here at The Seattle Public Library. Browse through our Calendar of Events and you’ll find very few days where there is not some kind of program happening either at the Central branch or in the many neighborhood branches. I would like to highlight three of our free, ongoing programs… Continue reading

  • Long Way Round and Down

    Do you like learning about the world? Do you like motorcycles? Do you think that Ewan McGregor is easy on the eyes? If you have answered yes to any or all of those questions, then keep reading. In 2004, actor Ewan McGregor, who some may know from Trainspotting, the Star Wars prequels, or Moulin Rouge!,… Continue reading

  • The Women

    “Anger and resentment can stop you in your tracks. That’s what I know now. It needs nothing to burn but the air and the life that it swallows and smothers. It’s real, though – the fury, even when it isn’t. It can change you… turn you… mold you and shape you into something you’re not.… Continue reading

  • From the Page to the Screen: Revolutionary Road

    Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road is a novel that has been lauded by critics and adored by other writers, but it has not garnered the same attention it deserves from readers. Sure, readers keep discovering Yates, but he doesn’t get the same kind of name recognition as other American writers like John Updike and John Cheever.… Continue reading

  • Last Minute Gift Ideas: Best Musicals

    Need help finding a last-minute gift for Broadway-loving friends? Here are a few suggestions of recent original cast recordings that should brighten their holidays! Three of these shows were nominated for the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical and the fourth one is in the running for a nomination for 2009. “In The Heights”, by… Continue reading

  • Loving in Limbo

    In the movie Wristcutters: A Love Story we find Zia, played by Patrick Fuget, who is severely depressed after his girlfriend breaks up with him and decides to commit suicide by slitting his wrists. Too bad the pearly gates are not his afterlife, but rather a rundown desert limbo with fellow suicide committers. When Zia finds… Continue reading

  • Off The Map

    “William Gibbs’ first painting was twenty inches high and thirty-one feet wide, one foot shy of the perimeter of my room. The dimensions suited the subject, the ocean’s horizon. He hung it so that when I lay on my bed, I could stare out fourteen miles to the horizon any way I looked. Encircled by… Continue reading

  • Lost and Found

    One of the most attention-getting displays we have ever done at the Central library was an exhibit of things we’ve found in library books. You’d see even the most harried or preoccupied patrons stop to peer into the Plexiglas case with its odd assortment of scribbled notes, old Polaroids, postcards, ticket stubs and bookmarks ornate… Continue reading

  • Napoleon on the Nile at the Frye

     How did 19th century artists and scientists come to rediscover Egypt and the Middle East? How did the images and explorations of those artists and scientists spark “Egyptomania” as a cultural phenomenon? Two museums in the Puget Sound area try to answer those questions with complementary exhibitions that look at Egypt and the Middle East… Continue reading