David W.

  • An Alphabet of Crime: Killer B’s

    Arriving at the B’s in my project to read through the mystery aisle, I can’t help but notice some favorite darker mystery authors that I’d love to share. Next week I’ll try something new, but for now here are some old friends: Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black. Black has brilliance to spare. Having already written a layered spy novel to rival… Continue reading

  • An Alphabet of Crime: Margery Allingham

    I made a couple of New Year’s resolutions involving crime this year: to start up a regular weekly crime column here in ShelfTalk, and to alphabetically read my way through the mystery section at the Central Library, two authors/letters each month. My colleague Linda has done this twice, up to the letter G anyway, and so I… Continue reading

  • A Thrilling Tale’s Best for Winter

    Actually, the quote – from Shakespeare – is “A sad tale’s best for Winter,” but I tend to disagree; I think we have plenty of S(easonal) A(ffective) D(isorder) around these parts already during the too-short days of Winter. So the stories I select for Thrilling Tales: the Storytime for Grown-Ups, our regular lunch hour story readings at the Central Library,… Continue reading

  • Fear and Loathing in Seattle

    It was forty years ago that Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas came forth blinking and convulsing with manic, paranoid brilliance into the light, and what a long strange trip it’s been! Long acknowledged as a cult classic, as the decades pass by without lessening the immediacy and scathing volatility of Thompson’s drug-fuelled picaresque in quest… Continue reading

  • A Month of Uncomfortable Cinema: 31 Disturbing Films

    It is the season of good cheer, so why am I posting a list of 31 of the creepiest, most unsettling movies ever made? Well as we tucked into our turkey this Thanksgiving, my mom mentions that she’s been reading my posts here at Shelf Talk. Aw, thanks Mom. “Do you really like all those dark, disturbing books? Don’t you read anything… Continue reading

  • Thanksgiving’s savory fiction: more bitter than sweet

    Thanksgiving is here: are you ready? Feeling thankful, or harried and freaked out? You’re probably far too busy to read anything from our new list of great fiction set on and around Thanksgiving, but maybe in a few days when things have calmed down a bit, as you begin to lose your taste for turkey and family, you can put your… Continue reading

  • Finding a Hit Man at your Public Library

    The seasoned professionals at your library pride ourselves on helping our patrons with their every need. We are highly skilled at cleaning up messes and tying up loose ends, at rubbing out your troublesome irritations, and making problems go away. So we have a certain grudging admiration for the skilled operators seen plying their deadly… Continue reading

  • Top Trends: The Irresistible “-ist” List

    When you work at a library, some literary trends aren’t that hard to spot: you tend to trip over them. A while back we started seeing lobsters everywhere, which last year were replaced by tigers. We’ve done whole book displays over covers featuring just feet, or headless women. (One avid reader in Montreal is especially gifted at keeping an… Continue reading

  • Grit, Twang, Soul: Your Southern roots are showing.

    Last night, watching Jim White cruising the fecund, salvation-starved backroads of the deep South in Searching for the Wrong-eyed Jesus, I kept hazily reflecting back on my own Southern childhood. My folks and I came north to Seattle when I was just four years old. From San Francisco. Yet White’s musing, music-filled backroads travelogue is suffused with… Continue reading

  • Who is Fantômas?

    “Fantômas.”                 “What did you say?” “I said: Fantômas.”                 “And what does that mean?” “Nothing…Everything!”                  “But what is it?” “Nobody….and yet, yes, it is somebody!”                  “And what does the somebody do?” “Spreads terror!” A century ago, these words unleashed reign of terror upon the literary world which continues to this day. It was… Continue reading

  • The Reading Dead: A Zombie literary salon.

    AMC’s The Walking Dead has risen again for a second season, but the aisles of your local library are already crowded with zombies, including Robert Kirkman’s original graphic novel series upon which the show is based (and what isn’t based on graphic novels at this point?) and the first season on DVD.   For anyone who thought the zombie craze was so 2009,… Continue reading

  • Bigfoot Sighted at the Library

    Many of us look back at the 70’s with fond embarrassment. Feathered hair, down vests, CB radios. This was the decade in which Clint Eastwood co-starred with an Orangutan, and we liked the idea so much that for three years we tuned in to watch Greg Evigan and a truck-driving chimpanzee in BJ and the Bear, a… Continue reading

  • Keeping you in Suspense: Thrilling Tales for Autumn

    It seems like Summer was hardly here at all, but longer chillier Fall nights are waiting in the wings, and with them a fresh batch of chilling stories for the library’s Thrilling Tales: A Storytime for Grownups. Taking place in the Central Library’s Microsoft Auditorium on the first and thirdMonday each month from 12:05 –… Continue reading

  • Cult Classics: Against the Grain

    Alternative to what? In a sea of sameness, the heroes of these cult classics march to the beat of their own drum. Brautigan, Richard Trout Fishing in America Drifting along with the flow of time, spinning in revelatory eddies, or striding against the cultural mainstream, we search for that elusive perfect spot to catch a… 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

  • Cult Classics: Into the Dark

    Strange things lurk in dark places. Another helping of titles that our readers keep coming back for, year after year. Andrews, V.C. Flowers in the Attic Shocking carnal secrets; torments of the body and the mind; for the Dollangangers, it’s all in the family. After 30 years, this lurid gothic tale is still going strong.… Continue reading

  • Cult Classics: Nightmare Visions

    Dystopian fiction is all the rage at the moment, but grim visions of the world as it might become, or as it already is, are nothing new. Here are some masterful views of our world glimpsed through a glass darkly that are perennially popular with our readers, and with good reason. Atwood, Margaret The Handmaid’s Tale A… Continue reading

  • Confessions of a book club dropout

    I still haven’t found a book club. Or rather, I haven’t found one I can stick with. I’m pretty sure it’s me; maybe I’m just a solitary reader by nature, or have commitment issues. Still, I can’t help but feel like I’m missing out, seeing all those great book groups our library hosts all over the city, including a… Continue reading