fiction

  • Novelist Adam Johnson’s insights into North Korea

    Editor’s note: We are thrilled to have Adam Johnson here today talking about books about North Korea and one of his research trips for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son. I must admit that I’m a huge fan of The Seattle Public Library—its yellow tubes and downhill stacks, the way rain sheets off the glass… 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

  • Book review: I Am Not a Serial Killer

    I’m not a big reader. I like books, but I simply don’t have the attention span to sit down for hours at a time, plowing through hundreds of pages, when I could be baking, sewing, or casually surfing the internet. However, I recently read a book so exciting and suspenseful that I not only read… 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

  • Voice on the Radio: Fictional DJs

    On the radio we heard November Rain                   That solo’s really long but it’s a pretty song                                      We listened to it twice cause the DJ was asleep –Regina Spektor Radio DJ Berry Lambert  lives her life shrouded with superstition in the novel With A Little Luck by Caprice Crane. She avoids black cats and… 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

  • Fear and Loathing in the Library

    While I do enjoy a good old fashioned Gothic ghost story from time to time, I have to come out of the closet with a deep, dark secret: I like my horror as bloody, gruesome and gory as possible. I like it when bones are broken, heads are severed and every excruciating detail of the… 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

  • MISSING

    They say the first 24 hours are the most crucial when trying to locate a missing person. These stories don’t have that luxury… I was originally drawn to the book Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran because the story takes place in New Orleans and I have a certain fascination… 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

  • World Fantasy Awards Nominees 2011

    The World Fantasy Awards were just announced a frew weeks, and it is a doozy of a list! I defy anyone to read the list of nominees for novel of the year and not conclude that these fantasy novels were some of the best literature written this year. The library currently has copies of all the… Continue reading

  • When Doctors Write

    Having recently read, and been moved by, works by Sherwin Nuland, Atul Gawande, and Abraham Verghese, I thought of a little stroll through the literature that has been written by doctors. An interesting and spiritual relationship, the work of healing and the creative work of the spirit—or so I thought. I soon discovered, though, that… Continue reading

  • Bicycling Everywhere (in the Central Library)

    There have been a lot of blogs about biking, I know, I know. But I hope this one is a little different. It’s about how books on a topic can turn up anywhere. Let’s start at the top of the Central Library and work our way down. Way up on the 9th floor (History, Travel… Continue reading

  • Aliens, cowboys and the return of Vinge

    After a decade of silence, the wonderful science fiction and fantasy author Joan D. Vinge has returned to the publishing world with her novelization of the new movie Cowboys and Aliens. Now before you cringe at the thought of a movie novelization, read on! Vinge, though she has authored almost 20 different books, is probably… Continue reading

  • How about a little horror for your summer?

    Our librarians put together a list of some of their favorite horror novels and short stories from the past couple of years. Most of the books are available now, or have short waitlists. Here are a few to get you started: Horns by Joe Hill After the murder of his girlfriend, Ig Parrish gets drunk… Continue reading

  • In honor of Joanna Russ

    In honor of the recent passing of author and critic Joanna Russ, I thought I would put together a short list of just a few of my favorite feminist science fiction and fantasy stories. For those of you who are not familiar with her work, Joanna Russ was one of the most ferocious and fearless… Continue reading