Category: Recommendations

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Booklists Recommendations

Fantastical Detectives in Magical Realms

by Public Service Associate Autumn

I love a good mystery novel, though I came to them much later than I should have. As a teen, when I had run out of my own books to read (for the week) and my family could not make it to the library, my grandfather gave me several Agatha Christie novels from his collection.1 But I didn’t read them that week. In fact, I didn’t read them until after I watched BBC’s wonderful adaptation, Poirot. But then, I was hooked: the twists and turns, the rooting out of each motive and link, fishing through all the red herrings, and perhaps most importantly, the satisfaction of knowing how all the pieces fit together in the end. It warms my order-loving soul.2 I immediately went back and read the Agatha Christie originals, then moved on to Arther Conan Doyle, Rex Stout, Stephen Spotswood and many more.

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Recommendations

Lifelong Learning: A (Quick) Study of Oysters

by Public Service Associate Juliana

image from Taylor Shellfish

 “Unless you’re vegetarian or vegan, you can’t go to Seattle and skip a platter of freshly shucked Pacific Northwest Oysters.”

— Lonely Planet Washington, Oregon & the Pacific Northwest

At the start of every travel journal, after flight details and a packing list, I create a checklist of things to do. Most recently, while planning a trip to Seattle, the list included Pike Place Market, the Space Needle, Seattle Central Library, coffee, and oysters.

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Recommendations

Five Ways to Browse Books in the Library

by Public Service Associate Juliana

Often, we come to the library looking for something specific – a book with a lot of buzz, something a friend recommended, one from our long TBR list, one we saw on #BookTok. What if we approached books in a different way? What if instead of a list of titles we browsed with a list of rules that encourage randomness? What if we weren’t attached to the outcome? What might we discover?

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Recommendations

Take a Look into Space: Weird and Fascinating Extrasolar Worlds

by Public Service Associate Autumn

Unless you have been living under a rock (or outside of North America), you probably noticed the eclipse that occurred on April 8, 2024. The media took to calling it “The Great American Eclipse”, as it covered only Mexico, the mainland United States and a small swath of Canada. Maybe you traveled to see the totality personally, maybe you just noticed the streetlights coming on at two in the afternoon and maybe you decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and stayed inside, away from the madness.

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BPL News & Information Recommendations

Preservation

by Public Service Associate & Creative Content Coordinator Hannah

Did you miss Preservation Week? Don’t worry, it will be here next year!

My bad jokes aside, preservation – an umbrella term for activities that reduce or prevent damage to extend the life of things – can easily slip one’s mind. But a recent trip to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Library of Congress thoroughly renewed my appreciation for preservationists and collecting institutions. In this BPL blog post, I hope to get you to think about, thank them, and as always share some great books.

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Booklists Recommendations

Our Incredible Bodies and the Importance of Homeostasis

By Public Service Associate Autumn

Everyone knows that humans (unlike much cooler reptiles) are warm blooded, or homeothermic.1 Our bodies try very hard to keep us at one consistent temperature, normally about 98 degrees. Even a four degree change in body temperature in either direction can cause us irreparable harm and a spiral into death. Understandably, this means that humanity has a pretty universal “comfortable” living temperature, between about 68- and 77-degrees Fahrenheit,2 where maintaining your core temperature isn’t too metabolically taxing. Despite this, humans live in basically every ecological niche there is, from Siberia and Northern Canada to the Sahara. Some of this adaptability is technological,3 but a fair amount of it is our bodies’ astonishing ability to cool us off and heat us up. What’s most interesting, to me at least, is how the body does this and what happens when those adaptations fail.

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Recommendations

Find a New Interest at the Library! Featuring Japanese Breakfast

by Public Service Associate Juliana

Photo by Juliana Farrington

Midori’s cooking was far better than I had imagined it would be, an amazing assortment of fried, pickled, boiled, and roasted dishes using eggs, mackerel, fresh greens, eggplant, mushrooms, radishes, and sesame seeds, all done in the delicate Kyoto style.

— from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

One of the many, many things that I love about the library is that you can develop an interest in something and absolutely take off with it. By which I mean, you can mine the catalog for any and every resource, and you can follow any connection that happens to come your way. I ended up doing this type of deep dive with Japanese breakfast. An interest was born, I followed one lead to the next and the next. From television to cookware, cookbook to novel, memoir to music. It has been such a fun journey; I have to share it.

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Recommendations

 Female Irish Authors to Read this March

by Public Service Associate Juliana

Author photos from Goodreads: Anne Enright, Carolyn O’Donoghue, Megan Nolan

I have been in love with Ireland ever since I was little and believed in fairies. Does that explain why I gravitate toward Irish writers? It seemed like a fairy trick last year when I’d start reading a novel and realize, “Another Irish author! How interesting!”

This month, in the spirit of celebrating Irish history and culture, it feels quite appropriate to highlight a few titles within this trend.

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Recommendations

Genre Spotlight: Cozy Fantasy

by Public Service Associate Autumn

Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

February makes me want nothing more than to sit and read, wrapped in a blanket, with a mug of tea (or hot chocolate). It’s mucky, wet and still fairly chilly outside, so inside I stay. And, as I learned last year, there is a book subgenre that gives you that same warm, cozy feeling as snuggling inside while the wind rages outside: Cozy Fantasy.

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Recommendations staff favorites

Lots of Love

by Public Service Associate Juliana

I was fourteen years old and obsessed with Kurt Cobain. His song, “Heart-Shaped Box”, inspired me to dump my Valentine candy into a bag and use the empty heart-shaped box for safekeeping. Shiny red, about the size of a dinner plate, it was perfect for love notes, by which I mean literally notes of “Things I Love.”

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