Kay K.

  • #BookBingoNW2023 In Translation: What’s in a Language?

    I always find the consuming too much of one thing to be detrimental to my reading health, like eating a menu of only grilled cheese sandwiches would be for example. For a wider, more nourishing literary diet (and to get another square for your Book Bingo blackout), I suggest adding books translated from other languages… Continue reading

  • #BookBingoNW2022: A book about books

    This summer, slow-down from the modern virtual world of the internet and open up the older virtual world of the book. Contemplate this way we humans choose to share and expand those worlds of our joint imaginations, oh and complete your “Book about Books” #BookBingoNW2022 square at the same time! As the saying goes –… Continue reading

  • City Hawks

    With the quieting of our city streets, I’ve been noticing the intensive activity of our urban bird neighbors, who have been courting, homebuilding and generally flying about with abandon as us humans slow down. Pigeons and robins abound, but twenty-five years ago Cooper’s Hawks began colonizing urban and suburban landscapes throughout the US, developing a… Continue reading

  • Throwback Thursday: March 31, 2008

    Seattle Reads, the arts, and gentrification was the topic in our Throwback Thursday post on March 31, 2008. If you have picked up this year’s Seattle Reads novel, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu you’ve had a chance to get one novelist’s take on some of the issues and pressures that can… Continue reading

  • Labor in Film: We Are Wisconsin

    In late winter of 2011, while the Middle East was deep in the midst of the “Arab Spring,” United States workers in the state of Wisconsin found themselves embroiled in a take-down struggle with Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Legislature to preserve their collective bargaining rights. Continue reading

  • Tricky books

    An amazingly wide range of questions come across our library information desks, I’m sure every librarian has their favorites. My current favorite was from an earnest young man of around seven years of age who was interested in “tricky books.” I tried to show him magic books with no satisfaction. Of course there just isn’t… Continue reading

  • Occasional Mysteries: Reading Retro

    I’ve recently been reading some classic historical mysteries. That’s classic not in the sense of “set in older times,” but as in foundations of the genre, written in the vernacular of older times. First published in 1903, The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers could in some ways be thought of as rather more… Continue reading

  • Films Found at my Branch

    I often browse the shelves of my branch library for impulse DVD’s to watch instead of commercial TV. This can lead to some winners and some losers. Staring at the shelves one asks oneself, “If this film is really any good, how come I haven’t heard of it?” Every now and then I get lucky… Continue reading

  • Tax Haiku for You

    Much work goes on behind the scenes at the library ordering and channeling federal tax forms into the hands of our patrons. Like our fellow citizens we look forward to today, the last filing day of the 2008 tax period and offer you a few haiku moments in honor of the day… April’s cruelest day… Continue reading

  • Artist Oliver Herring at the Seattle Public Library

    On Saturday June 28, The Seattle Public Library downtown hosts an all day group performance of TASK by Oliver Herring. Co-sponsored by the Frye Art Museum, On the Boards, and the Tacoma Art Museum, the piece revolves around spontaneous interactions between a group of volunteer local performers working to complete “tasks” assigned first by the… Continue reading

  • Gentrification and the Arts

    If you have picked up this year’s Seattle Reads novel, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu you’ve had a chance to get one novelist’s take on some of the issues and pressures that can fracture a community changing in the face of gentrification and immigration. Facing similar issues, particularly those of gentrification… Continue reading

  • Comedy from Canada

    Are you constantly annoyed by what’s on commercial television and find you have watched all the hot HBO series from beginning to end? Try Slings & Arrows, a three season comedy from Canada available on DVD. The story takes place behind the scenes of the fictional New Burbage Festival, a theatre troupe modeled loosely on… 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

  • Blurring Boundaries: translating the digital to the book

    With all the press lately about Kindle, the latest wireless reading device to take a stab at capturing the book reading market, it is interesting to see books traveling the other way, out of the ether and on to the printed page. The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life by John Maeda an internationally… Continue reading

  • Healing the Mind

    Stroke. Brain Damage. Strong words we hear more of these days, with an aging population and engagement in a difficult war with injured soldiers returning to everyday life. Words that call up terrifying images of darkness and loss, for both the injured and their loved ones. Images of diving into the healthcare system like entering… Continue reading

  • Leaving Deadwood

    One thing I notice when watching some of the edgier television shows released on DVD for home viewing, is the excellent music selections that appear incidentally at the end or in the middle of a show, sort of audio riffs on some pragmatic theme. Whoever is choosing this music has a great ear for matching… Continue reading