On Monday I saw an announcement in our local paper that two branches of the Tacoma Public Library would be opening for timed-entry, in-person browsing beginning the next day. One of those two is a local library for us, so this was a not-to-be-missed opportunity. A quick click to the library web site revealed that […]
A Visit to the Library! And a Restaurant! Read More »
Book Club Spotlight: How This 20-Year-Old Book Club Connects Virtually The group of 15 ladies successfully transitioned from over 20 years of dinner and monthly meetings at the Rancho Santa Margarita City Hall to a virtual format — and were even able to welcome back a few members! Most recently, the club held its annual
We Need More Dark Stories with Hopeful Endings Author Les Edgerton believes that dark novels needn’t have completely dark endings: “To endure page after page of never-ending pain and sorrow and to culminate in the same morass of tragedy would only be nihilism, and the best books don’t end like that.” Here he lists some
Why a Campaign to ‘Reclaim’ Women Writers’ Names Is So Controversial “Critics say Reclaim Her Name fails to reflect the array of reasons authors chose to publish under male pseudonyms” Nora McGreevy reports in Smithsonian Magazine about the Reclaim Her Name project recently launched by the Women’s Prize for Fiction in conjunction with Baileys (of Irish
I’ve been jealously eyeing people’s Instagram and Facebook posts showing off their book hauls from their library’s curbside pickup service. A lot of libraries opened for pickup while I’ve been not-so-patiently waiting for announcements from both my city and county libraries. Now my county library has finally figured out how to handle pickup service. They’re
Look! A Library Book! Read More »
Murder, He Wrote When Charles Dickens dropped dead on 9 June 1850, he was hard at work on his latest novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Readers who had already devoured the first three instalments of the story were left to solve its central mystery without the author’s help. On the 150th anniversary of Dickens’s
Find Your Place at the Library: National Library Week April 19-25, 2020 Source: National Library Week | Conferences & Events
National Library Week April 19-25, 2020 Read More »
Some holiday reading . . . 50 States of Love “From sea to shining sea, here’s a tour of unforgettable fiction that explores matters of the heart.” 125 Books We Love As the New York Public Library celebrates its 125th anniversary, “125 Books We Love honors all the books from the past 125 years that
Happy Valentine’s Day! Read More »
SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM LIBRARY TOURISM Jen Sherman declares “public libraries should be a tourist destination the way museums are.” And she knows whereof she speaks: I started doing a PhD about public libraries in 2012, and in the past eight years, I have visited 112 libraries in six different countries (primarily USA and Australia). I
WHY READ FICTION IN THIS AGE OF ATROCITY? Content Warning: This piece discusses recent sexual assault headlines. I want to be as frank with you as is possible: it is increasingly hard for me to find joy or purpose in reading lately, specifically novels. I find myself asking, why read fiction at all when the
