Nonfiction

  • Seattle Picks: Biography and Memoir

     There’s a great list of suggested biographies — Seattle Picks: Biography and Memoir — in our catalog, and most of them are available now or have short holds lists. We selected these six titles with a literary tie-in to feature here. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami After selling his jazz… Continue reading

  • Don’t forget the sunscreen – or the rain gear!

    Here’s hoping you’ll need the sunscreen. Whether it is a destination lake, a stroll along a creek or an adventurous climb, there are lots of places nearby where you can let the city noise fall to the trailside and sleep in your own bed by nightfall. How do you locate the day hike that fits… Continue reading

  • The World’s Fair

    The Century 21 Exposition (or Seattle World’s Fair) took place in Seattle from April 21 to October 21, 1962. The first major American world’s fair after World War II, it presented an optimistic vision of a future improved through science and technology, and promoted Seattle to the world as a space-age city. Exhibits focused on… Continue reading

  • Start Spreading the News

    If there is any industry or service that has had to hear the braying prognostications of pessimistic doomsayers more than the library, it has to be the newspaper business. In that regard I feel a particular kinship with those who continue to toil tirelessly for the journalistic profession, especially if we are related by blood.… Continue reading

  • To Oz on a Nook

    One of the best things about using an e-reader, as I keep saying, is the tons of out of print wonderful books available now. (“Tons” I use metaphorically, because being e-books, they don’t weigh a thing.) I eagerly browse the OverDrive Gutenberg E-Books and have hit the jackpot a number of times. Lately, since it’s… Continue reading

  • Summer reading: Suggestions from Northgate Library readers

    Gotz and Meyer by David Albahari A very different take on the genocide of the holocaust, as imagined through the eyes of two non-commissioned SS officers assigned to drive the gassing trucks.        ~ Sharie  The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley A quirky, slightly dark mystery solved by a quirky,… Continue reading

  • Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

    If I were a benevolent dictator (and how could it be otherwise?), I’d make everyone read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Snyder’s work is too important to gather dust; it must be on the move, it must pass from hand to hand until we’ve all read it. From cover to cover. Why? As… Continue reading

  • Origami Boxes

    I like to fold paper. A lot. I don’t like make cranes, other cute animals or little people. I like making boxes, and putting together geometric shapes. There is one origami author and artist that is the queen of such things: Tomoko Fuse. Her boxes can be fairly (and I use the term loosely) simple, to… Continue reading

  • Five Presidents — and their Civil War battles

    Do great generals make for great presidents? From George Washington to Ike Eisenhower, our nation has often elevated military leaders to the White House. The Civil War battlefields, now being recalled upon the 150th anniversary of the war, launched several future presidents and presidential contenders. Touched With Fire: Five Presidents and the Civil War Battles… Continue reading

  • Citation chase

    If I were to think of all the books I have read because they were mentioned in another book, why I would be thinking for quite a while here.  It is so often the case that I follow an author’s mention of a title and look for and read that title, that I don’t even… Continue reading

  • Fashion Redux

    I know, I just posted about pre-1950 fashion designers, but the new Alexander McQueen book, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (2011), has got me excited again about some later designers of note. Sadly, McQueen committed suicide in February of 2010, but his work is amazing. He said that he designed from the side, because that is… Continue reading

  • Literary Fathers and Sons

    There are plenty of novels about fathers and sons; our catalog boasts 1,339 entries under the subject “fathers and sons – fiction.”  There are many excellent father-son memoirs too, including my own favorites: Fathering Words, poet E. Ethelbert Miller’s eloquent account of the speaking silences between he and his father; The Next Better Place, Michael… Continue reading

  • The 2010 Census information released…has it really been 10 years?

    Just recently the Census Bureau released the first of its 2010 Census statistics for Washington State.  And more information will be forthcoming over the next year. And that is so important for all of us in Seattle, King County and Washington State.  Why get excited?  Here are a few reasons why we should all care… Continue reading

  • The Poetry Lesson, by Andrew Codrescu

    If you already are an Andrei Codrescu aficionado, have read any of his books (26 titles are available in The Seattle Public Library Catalog), listen to his weekly commentaries on NPR, then you’ll delight in The Poetry Lesson, his latest publication by the Princeton University Press that recently hit bookstores and libraries. One may hope… Continue reading

  • Sotero Photograph Collection

    The Seattle Public Library has a number of interesting visual collections. One example is the Sotero photograph collection, which offers a window into the world of African Americans in uniform during the World War II era. Marjorie Sotero collected these photographs during her time as a director of the African American Servicemen’s Clubs at Seattle’s… Continue reading

  • Treasures of the Library: Old, Big Magazines

    While perusing the magazine shelves at the Central Library one day, I came across some very large, very aged magazines we have in our collection that aren’t in publication anymore. I took a look. I was delighted with what I found inside. Each one is about  11 inches by 17 inches in size (they are… Continue reading

  • What’s funny?

    Sometimes we just want a funny book, but our definitions of “funny” differ widely according to individual taste, background and predilection. When I was six going on sixteen I thought my mother’s sense of humor was just bizarre. She loved Jerry Lewis, Tony Curtis and Lucille Ball: it was the slapstick humor she loved. To… Continue reading

  • A look back at West Seattle

    Last year the West Seattle Branch library celebrated its centennial: 100 years in a building that has always and only served as a library for the Admiral neighborhood. The library has weathered just a few changes in 100 years: earthquakes, a flu epidemic, and card catalogs that morphed into microfilm to computer databases, not to… Continue reading