David W.

  • Booklovers, beware!

    It is that time of year again, and I’m in serious danger. It is absolutely essential that I do not even THINK of going to the Friends of the Library’s Fall Book Sale coming up next weekend. Under no circumstances whatsoever. Not within a mile of the place! I’m a librarian surrounded by books every day, so you might… Continue reading

  • Appreciating Book Bloggers

    Did you know we’re smack in the middle of Book Blogger’s Appreciation Week? Yuh-huh. So let me take this opportunity to appreciate a recent arrival on the scene that really fills a gap in the local blogosphere: Reading Local Seattle. Started by up this past July by local author Matt Briggs as a sibling of Reading… Continue reading

  • The kids are getting restless!

    What are your kids – if you have kids – up to this summer? If I remember my own childhood summers aright, they’re probably getting just a little bit desperate about now, as the fireworks recede in the rearview mirror and the memory of being released from school is just as hazy as the awareness… Continue reading

  • Are you more well-read than a 5th grader?

    How’s your summer reading going? Ours is going great. And by ours, we mean our Adult Summer Reading Program. So far this month, 1,434 adults have signed up for the reading program in branches all over the city, and have read 2,969 books, that they’ve told us about anyway. That’s the entire population of Willacoochee,… Continue reading

  • Is it summer? Are you reading? Guess what that means…

    Oh, those summer evenings in Seattle. Plenty of time to sink into a good book. Sure, we know it isn’t technically summer yet, but mother nature doesn’t seem to have figured that out this June – knock wood – and the nights have been just perfect, with ample light to read by late into the evening, and enough warmth… Continue reading

  • A Digital Bookmobile? Its on the road!

    I remember when audiobooks were on vinyl! Really! (Shorter books and plays, mostly). Imagine listening to a book on a turntable, and having to flip it every 20 minutes. Imagine a part of the story skipping on a scratch …on a scratch …on a scratch. Sure, vinyl’s cool and all, and I won’t argue that… 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

  • New literary craze has readers topsy-turvy!

    Readers of avant-garde literature are flipping over the latest experimental wrinkle in fiction. Inspired by the narrative hijinx of such post-modern stylists as the late David Foster Wallace, and Mark Danielewski (whose Only Revolutions asks the reader to rotate the book while reading), a bold new breed of writers and publishers are literally overturning the literary scene with what may be the… Continue reading

  • Eat This Book!

    If you haven’t yet heard about the Seattle Edible Book Festival, prepare to be delighted. This annual event scheduled for “around April 1” each year is our local chapter of the International Edible Book Festival — no, this is better — Le Festival International Du Livre Mangeable! Yes, there are people all over the world doing this: Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, France,… Continue reading

  • Reading the Signs

    A while ago we had a couple of posts about some intriguing collections of found objects – notes, photos, love letters, grocery lists – mostly things you were never meant to see that offer revealing sidelong glimpses at lives, and life. Of course, things you were meant to see can be revealing also. And hilarious.… Continue reading

  • Watching the Watchmen: The Superhuman Factor.

    Finally: This week is the loooong awaited premiere of the Watchmen movie based on the renowned genre-bending graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The original, together with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (partial inspiration for the recent hit films), helped usher in a new “dark age” in superhero comics, one that is bleaker,… Continue reading

  • Publisher Crush: Hesperus Press

    Perhaps it is a side effect of being around books all day, but about as often as I find myself falling for a particular author’s style or voice, I become fascinated with a particular publisher or imprint. I’m especially fond of re-print houses that specialize in bringing back into print those lost treasures and hidden gems… Continue reading

  • Toronto, Mon Amour

    I grew up in Seattle, and am used to hearing out-of-towners who visit the downtown library raving about our breathtaking city (and libraries). Well now I know how they feel. I just returned from my third visit to Toronto, where I was speaking at a library conference, and have been boring everyone silly with effusions… Continue reading

  • Homegrown Reading

    Lately instead of just fretting over the health of local bookstores, I’ve started to fret over the local publishing scene, too. I’ve tried to laugh about it, but the bad news just keeps coming.  Will I someday be mourning the loss of Copper Canyon or Sasquatch Books the way I now miss browsing that glorious biblio-mayhem at Shorey’s… 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

  • Mean, Rainy Streets

    Weary of the weather? And its only January? Try this: turn up your trenchcoat collar against the wind, snap down your fedora to the rain, put some moody jazz on your iPod, and pretend you’re the star of your own film noir. Seattle is a great setting for hardboiled crime. Here are some Northwest crime titles to get… Continue reading

  • New Year’s Resolutions for Readers!

    Now these we just might be able to keep! 1. I will reread a book I loved as a child. 2. I will finally read that classic from high school that I’ve been avoiding.  3. I’ll find a book of poetry and read some aloud.  4. I’ll spend an hour in aimless browsing at a library. … 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