Authors & Books

  • Why I love ‘I Love You, Beth Cooper’

    I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle is seriously the funniest book I’ve read in the last two years. During his graduation night speech, Denis Cooverman, valedictorian at Buffalo Grove High School, urges his fellow classmates to leave with no regrets for the things they wanted to say but could not. Our hero pauses… Continue reading

  • Cool Site: Overbooked

    Websites aimed at readers are often labors of love created by people who would really rather be reading, and so even the most promising sites come and go with unsettling rapidity.  So when a site like Overbooked.org sticks around for a dozen years, it is something to celebrate.  Years before metacritic or bookmarks magazine began summarizing critical consensus from the vast array of book… Continue reading

  • Four Books for a Desert Island

    If I’m ever really stranded on a desert island, the books I want to have with me must have titles like Raft Building for Dummies, 500 Ways to Cook Coconuts, Getting Along with Your Invisible Friends, and of course, How to Escape a Desert Island. For that desert island visit with a small working sailboat, I… Continue reading

  • Book review: The Sound of Us by Sarah Willis

    In The Sound of Us (by Sarah Willis), Alice Marlowe, an interpreter for the deaf, receives a phone call in the middle of the night that is clearly a wrong number. On the other end of the line is a six-year-old girl who is all alone and trying to reach her aunt. Alice knows she shouldn’t… Continue reading

  • Arthur C. Clarke’s best books

    When I was in third grade, in the early 1970s, I encountered Arthur C. Clarke on a classroom book spinner.  I was intrigued by the cover and the title and promptly took the book home and devoured it, thus beginning a lifelong love of hard science fiction.  My tastes have broadened considerable since, but most… Continue reading

  • Book review: Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

    Mary Doria Russell visits The Seattle Public Library this Thursday (March 20) to introduce her new book, Dreamers of the Day, to the delight of her many Seattle fans. Mary’s first book, The Sparrow, won the James Tiptree award in 1996 and the Arthur C. Clarke award in 1998, and still is in constant demand… Continue reading

  • High adventure and inspiration

     Do you like a touch of inspiration with your real-life adventure? Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Tby Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin errorism and Build Nations — One School at a Time OK, I’ll admit I picked up this book because “everyone’s reading it.” It was featured in The Seattle Public… Continue reading

  • Wisconsin on my mind

    Maybe it’s the dark cold winters and the subsequently long hours spent indoors but a whole lot of writing is going on in the state of Wisconsin. And a lot of it is quality fiction. Two authors new to me live in Wisconsin − Jesse Lee Kercheval author of The Alice Stories, (connected stories poignantly… Continue reading

  • Happy Birthday, Betty MacDonald!

    Every so often history offers us a chance to revisit a good book. This March is the centennial of the birth of Betty MacDonald, author of The Egg and I (1945) which is a memoir of life on a “chicken ranch” on the Olympic peninsula near Chimacum from 1927-1931. Betty observed the very rural and… Continue reading

  • The New Gothics: less romance, more horror

    Popular in the 1970s, gothic romance was defined by Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: dark and stormy night, castle or manor house with frightened fleeing maiden in a nightgown on the book cover. Other popular authors in this genre included Anya Seton, Phyllis Whitney, Dorothy Eden and Victoria Holt. For the past two decades, fewer gothics have… Continue reading

  • Follow the Yellow Brick Road to Children’s Book Blogs

    Have you ever wondered how to keep up with the thousands of children’s books that are published in a year? Have you always wanted to be able to know more about a book than what you can look through at a bookstore or read the reviews about on amazon.com? Well, here are a few blogs… Continue reading

  • Book Review: Moonshine by Rob Thurman

    When good girl psychic Georgina King goes missing in Moonshine by Rob Thurman, it’s up to Cal and Niko Leandros to bring her home. Using wits, wiles and blunt force trauma, the guys manage to infiltrate the werewolf mafia and locate the one treasure that can save the girl. If you like gallows humor, don’t… Continue reading

  • Happy Birthday, Doris!

    A friend told me about the book Century Girl: 100 years in the life of Doris Eaton Travis, last living star of the Ziegfeld Follies, by Lauren Redniss, a mind-blowingly original and unique illustrated biography of Doris Eaton.  I love this book so much for all its cultural cross referencing and magnificent handwritten text, memorabilia… Continue reading

  • Dijiste Que Me Querías: Como Sobrellevar lo Impensable por Maria Antonieta Collins

     Our library serves people speaking many languages. Here is one of them. Maria Antonieta es una escritora fácil de leer, con un colorido y peculiar lenguaje. En este libro nos narra el sufrimiento y dolor que soporto con la enfermedad de su esposo Fabio Fajardo; para después descubrir que su amado esposo cometió bigamia y… Continue reading

  • Have you heard about “Seeds of Compassion” ?

    A historic five-day gathering to focus the world’s attention on the importance of nurturing kindness and compassion will take place at large-scale venues in Seattle from April 11 to 15, 2008. This spiritually-significant event will include public presentations by the Dalai Lama, as well as other luminaries. For a complete listing of events see Seeds… Continue reading

  • What are your sure-fire hits when it comes to books?

    If you’re looking in on Shelf Talk, chances are good you are a “book person,” and as such, are probably the go-to person for friends and family when it comes to what books they should read. This task requires much thought. What do they normally like to read? What mood have they been in recently?… Continue reading

  • (Reading About) The Great Outdoors

    One of the things I love about living in Seattle is our proximity to the ocean and mountains and old-growth forests. Hey, occasionally you can even see the mountains (when it’s not overcast).  Alas, I don’t seem to get out into the great outdoors as often as I would like, but the next best thing… Continue reading

  • Synchronicity in the Backyard

    Even with the gardening season right around the corner, the thoughtful gardener will still always find time to read, dream of and ponder the natural world around us. After reading about global warming via the lengthy series of New Yorker articles excerpted from Elizabeth Kolbert’s acclaimed recent book Field Notes from a Catastrophe, documenting the… Continue reading