Out of an abundance of caution and concern for everyone, this year’s Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, originally scheduled for April 25, has been postponed. August 29, 2020, a Saturday, is the tentative new date. Visit our SIBD web page seattlebookstoreday.org. It lists all of the bookstores involved in this year’s event. Many, if not most, …
I love to learn things from the books I read, and this book taught me so much— not only about the South Korean island Jeju, its matrifocal society of haenyeo (women divers), and its culture and traditions, but also about friendship, the horrors of war, loyalty, and grief. The Island of Sea Women is vividly imagined and …
Kirkland, WA was the site of the first reported cases of coronavirus in the US. The governor of WA, Jay Inslee, declared a state of emergency (as have CA and MD). Large tech employers have instructed employees to work from home and one school district has closed for up to two weeks while they transition …
Lansing’s version of Ernest Shakleton’s 1914 expedition to Antarctica is a masterful must read for anyone who seeks adventure or just wants to dream about it. Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, became icebound, miles short of their Antarctic destination. The crew lived aboard the icebound ship for the next ten months. Eventually, the ship was crushed …
by Paul Constant for The Seattle Times (originally posted Jan. 21, 2020) Nourishing “long roots”: In a year, Madison Books has forged an essential role in one of Seattle’s oldest communities Decades before Seattle Center was built, Madison Park was where Seattle came to have fun. Early settlers in Pioneer Square would escape the hustle …
On Saturday, February 15, 2020, Liberty Bay Books reopened in its historic space in downtown Poulsbo, WA with a new owner and a new look. On February 1, Suzanne Droppert (who is still the owner of Ballast Book Co. in Bremerton) passed the Liberty Bay Books keys to children’s author and now bookstore owner Suzanne …
This short story collection does what Yuknavitch does best—asks you to trade your life for a book that is just strange and beautiful enough for you to make the deal. I floated through these stories the same way I’ve floated through her other work, almost unaware of time passing. Her endangered characters make terrible and …
Every ten years a cold and fearsome wizard known only as the Dragon takes a young woman from Agnieszka’s village; it’s a sacrifice they must endure to keep their village safe from the corrupted, malevolent Wood. No one knows what the women must endure in the Dragon’s castle, but they always return changed. When Agnieszka …
Yoshitake’s Still Stuck, the story of a boy who can’t get his shirt off, is one of our very favorite picture books [plus a Paulina Springs Books favorite, too], and in his latest, a child is confronted by an even more common, and more challenging, difficulty: being bored. Turns out being bored can lead you to wonder: …
In 2008 I quit an all-consuming sales position in Missoula and tried to move with my husband to Lake Pend Oreille in the slim Idaho panhandle, where we hoped to rededicate ourselves to our writing. Mother nature had other plans for us, blanketing the Inland Northwest with record-breaking snowfall and rendering our little cabin in …
