Nonfiction

  • Happy New Year: The Year of the Ox

    The lunar New Year is celebrated in many countries in Asia. Not only do the Chinese communities around the world celebrate this, but the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Mongolians and others consider this festivity one of the most important celebrations of the year.  The lunar New Year starts with the New Moon on the first… Continue reading

  • Inaugural Buzz

    Transitions of power have always had the capacity to fascinate us, and today’s inauguration is no exception.  Washington D.C. is expecting an influx of 4 to 5 million people trying to get close to the action, and many more of us (including in the Central Library’s own Microsoft Auditorium) will be watching the ceremony on… Continue reading

  • Banned Book-of-the-Month Club presents: Soul On Ice, by Eldridge Cleaver

    It begins like a spy movie. Late one night in the autumn of 1975, a group of school board members on Long Island New York asked the janitor to let them into the library, where they began rifling through the card catalog looking for titles from a leaflet in their hand. The flyer was produced… Continue reading

  • More Fun with Physics

    Can physics be fun?  Understandable?  Even for the non-scientist?  Take it from this dyed-in-the-wool English major, the answer is “yes!” –  if you read the right books.  Here are a few to try: Physics of the Impossible: a scientific exploration into the world of phasers, force fields, teleportation, and time travel  by Michio Kaku  Kaku… Continue reading

  • A Vitamin D Deficiency Rx: A Little “Light” Reading

    As we approach the winter solstice with its abbreviated daylight, many of us in the Pacific Northwest find ourselves in need of a little light therapy. To infuse some much-needed luster into our lives, we’ve compiled an eclectic-and electric-selection of books, music, and videos. Cozy up in a chair and read by the radiant warmth… Continue reading

  • Staff Favorites: Dogs and strays.

    Travels with Charley: In Search of America, by John Steinbeck If this book doesn’t make you want to take a road trip, I don’t know what will. The first paragraph so completely captures the urge to travel that I feel profoundly moved every time I read it. At age 58, Steinbeck sets out to rediscover… Continue reading

  • Books for Giving: Nonfiction for Children

    Here are a few of our children’s librarians’ choices for great nonfiction books for children: Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteauby Jennifer Berne This dreamy picture book biography tells the story of the young French boy who fell in love with the sea and grew up to become the world’s most famous oceanographer.  L Is… Continue reading

  • The Secret Lives of Authors: Literary gossip

    What does it mean to know a lot about writers’ personal lives? That I am a literary snoop?  Why is it that I can remember that Jean Korelitz Hanff is married to poet Paul Muldoon, that the mother of  YA author Margo Rabb died at a young age of cancer, that Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman… Continue reading

  • Literally, the best gifts ever for a grammar lover

    Every few years, a book comes along that is an absolutely perfect gift for those brave souls who never confuse their pronouns nor mix their tenses. Four years ago, that book was Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss; three years ago it was Maira Kalman’s elegant, witty illustrations that made it imperative that I… Continue reading

  • Lost and Found II

    Following up on a recent post on found objects, here are some other cool lost things found at the library. Ian Phillips’s Lost: Lost and Found Pet Posters is loaded with notices of missing dogs, cats, bunnies, birds (including several identically-described cockatoos), and ferrets in photographs or drawings, dashed off in desperation or lovingly detailed by a child’s hand, together with… Continue reading

  • Parenting in the Wired Age

    Parents today have so many networks and resources available to them. It can be daunting, but it can also be reassuring. There are so many decisions to make, so many styles to choose from. Do you breastfeed or bottle-feed, or both? What bottles should you use? Cloth or disposable? Co-sleeping or crib? Those first months… 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

  • Natural Seattle

    As a native Seattleite, I’ve been blessed my entire life with our four seasons, umpteen varieties of rain, and countless beautiful days (no matter what kind of weather we’re having).  Recently someone asked me about a particular bit of weather lore, and this led me on a quest to find out more not just about… Continue reading

  • A president in the family

    During this presidential election, I am reminded of our family’s dearly held connection to another president, in another time. Our family has always been proud to be able to claim a connection (although distant) to Franklin Pierce.  My mother and grandmother took our family history very seriously. Stories and White House artifacts we own were… Continue reading

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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