classics

  • Why you should read Les Misérables

    You’re watching it on PBS, and maybe you can hum all the tunes from the musical – but there’s nothing quite like reading the book itself. But it’s so looong! True. Compared to the miniseries adaptation‘s six-hour running time, the unabridged audiobook – read by master narrator George Guidall – runs for over sixty hours,… Continue reading

  • Reading Notre Dame

    It has to be the worst possible reason to have a bestseller. In the wake of last week’s devastating fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel Notre Dame de Paris – perhaps better known to English speakers as The Hunchback of Notre Dame – has climbed to the top of the… Continue reading

  • #BookBingoNW2017: Reread a Book You Read in School

    Although we are hard pressed to think of a single drawback to Book Bingo, it is true that for some readers it calls forth unwelcome memories of required reading. Yet the popularity of bingo and similar reading challenges and groups suggests that something appeals to us about being stretched beyond our habitual reading appetites. Might those same… Continue reading

  • Book Bingo: Written Over 100 Years Ago – Vintage Beach Reads!

    Join The Seattle Public Library and Seattle Arts & Lectures for our 2nd annual Summer Book Bingo for adults! Follow us throughout the summer for reading suggestions based on each category. Wait, we’ve got a Book Bingo square asking you to read a book written over one hundred years ago? This is Summer reading! What’s with Ye Olde musty dusty classics!? Not to… Continue reading

  • 125th Anniversary Series: What We Were Reading in 1891

    2016 marks the 125th anniversary of The Seattle Public Library. After it was adopted as a department of the city in 1890, the Library opened its first reading room in Pioneer Square on April 8, 1891. To honor this milestone, we will be posting a series of articles here about the Library’s history and life in… Continue reading

  • October Takeover: Frankenstein

    ~posted by Tyler N. Mary Shelley’s classic story of hubris and horror has been retold and adapted so many times that in some ways to read the original work is something of a shock.  The creature brought to life by Victor Frankenstein resembles so little the moaning, stiff-legged monster with green skin and neck bolts,… Continue reading

  • Fantasy Checklist Challenge: Classic Fantasy

    ~posted by Meranda T. Classic Fantasy is both old and new. What we casually think of as Fantasy is relatively new. However, Fantasy has been around for ages if we take into consideration fairy tales, myths, folk stories, and legends. Look to the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Yei Theodora Ozaki, and many more for translations of stories… Continue reading

  • So many books, so little time! 

    By Diane At times, relief is looking at my bedside table and finding a nice thin book on the stack. And so much the better when it turns out to be an exceptional read! One such a rare find was This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash. In a little over 200 pages, Cash makes… Continue reading

  • Nightstand Reads: Christopher Barzak, author of “Before and Afterlives,” shares what he’s reading

    Christopher Barzak will be reading from his recent collection of short stories, Before and Afterlives, on Wednesday, June 25th at the Central Library on Level 4, Room 2 at 7:00 p.m. His novel One for Sorrow was recently made into the film Jamie Marks is Dead, starring Liv Tyler and Judy Greer. Christopher was kind enough… Continue reading

  • Mysteries for non-mystery readers

    “Oh, I would never read a mystery!” If you love crime fiction, you almost certainly have at least one of these in your life. They don’t mean to be snobs or anything, but mysteries? Um, no thanks. Life’s too short, they’ll say, to waste it on such frivolities. In the library, they don’t even know… Continue reading

  • G is for Goodis, Dark Prince of Noir.

    I know – you were thinking G was for Grafton, but as the Kinsey Milhone series already made an appearance in a recent post on the most prolific female detectives, I get to resume my Alphabet of Crime with one of my all time favorites: David Goodis. Close your eyes and think of “Noir.” What do you see, hear, feel?… Continue reading

  • The Scarlet Letter Revisited

    “The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”  -The Scarlet Letter What I love most about The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is it’s timelessness. It is just… Continue reading

  • 10 American classics to add to your to-read list

    You think you’ve read all of the American classics? Or perhaps you hide from them because they seem a little too close to required reading? Take a look at the 10 listed here, and then at our complete 30-novel Seattle Picks: American Classics list hand-picked by our librarians. Sure, you’ll find Fitzgerald and Faulkner on… Continue reading

  • Seattle Picks: Short Classics

    We’re often asked for suggestions of shorter classics. Sometimes the reader has an assignment where the teacher or professor says “read a classic” and leaves it wide open. Sometimes the reader wants to explore classics, but feels a little intimidated. And sometimes the reader just wants a book that doesn’t weigh a lot. Our Short Classics booklist is one of… Continue reading

  • Banned Book of the Month: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    Consistently among the most challenged books in schools and libraries, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has courted controversy since its original publication back in 1885, though not always for the same reason. It was first removed from the collection of the Concord Free Library in Massachusetts over its “rough, course and inelegant expressions.” I… Continue reading

  • Reading those censored books

    Every year, the American Library Association puts out a list of the most challenged books of the previous year, plus a distressingly thick catalog of banned and challenged books. This article at The Onion made me think about all the various banned books that most of us really never read (or read for the wrong… Continue reading

  • Sissy Spacek does Scout

    To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – Audiobook read by Sissy Spacek If you’re like me, you read this book in high school because you had to but don’t remember all the details.  Harper Lee’s great novel is considered a classic for good reason – it’s powerful and gripping and deals with timeless issues… Continue reading