Based on the Tony-award winning play, The Humans is heavy on dialogue and works to build complex, authentically flawed characters.It’s a dimly lit family drama that takes place on Thanksgiving night at the daughter’s lower Manhattan apartment. The synopsis reveals that “as darkness falls outside and eerie things start to go bump in the night, the group’s deepest fears are laid bare.” This leads you to think it’s a horror movie.
While The Humans is not without haunted house aspects – creaky floorboards, strange noises, light bulbs that suddenly burn out – there’s nothing gorey or hard to look at except for water damaged walls and a pretty awful bathroom.
The true horror that materializes is that which is inherent to family gatherings. All the insecurities and baggage. Drinking paired with underlying issues. The chaos of cooking. Stress and pressure of expectations. For the entirety of the film, the viewer is waiting for something terrible to happen, for the tensions to implode.
Certain scenes stayed with me long after the film ended, including the brightest part of the film which is what I want to leave you with. The pig smash.
After the dinner plates are cleared the family places a peppermint pig into a red velvet bag and sends it around the table with a small hammer. Each person shares something they are thankful for and takes a whack at it. Afterward, the broken pig pieces are shared in hopes of good fortune to come.
The film is dark and evocative overall, but it’s not without twinkles of optimism.
Many Octobers I have steeped myself in scary movies, but this year I feel driven to read something scary. There’s no better place to start than with a classic from horror queen, Shirley Jackson. When I searched the fiction stacks I found The Haunting of Hill House. Orange and black cover, inky, black-edged pages and the title in gothic font, I was immediately obsessed.
It occurred to me to recruit my husband to read it as well. We could make a spookfest of the season, read late into the evenings while bats flap above the school across the street, chat about our progress each morning over dark roast coffee. If he reads it too, at least he will understand why I’ve started asking him to leave the lights on.
Fear of the dark aside, I’ve begun to approach the horror genre with curiosity. While horror can often be gory and gratuitous, it’s rarely without some kind of overarching commentary. When it comes to horror, author Nat Cassidy says he’s made it his life’s work to defend it “specifically because of its unique ability to allow us to address larger issues under the cover of entertainment.” Horror can convey societal issues and anxieties in ways that create space for dialogue about difficult topics.
As a new fall tradition, invite someone to read with you and meet up for a pumpkin spice latte and bookish conversation. Here are a few novels to get you started: The Changeling by Victor LaVelle, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, or Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.
“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.
Seattle is an oyster mecca. Food writer Rowan Jacobsen says, “No city is as oyster-mad as Seattle.” A dozen oysters to share became a main priority on the trip’s to-do list. And this became a good reason to brush up on knowledge about bivalves.
Learning about oysters, like learning about wine, has always felt intimidating to me. Where does one start? With the scope narrowed to Washington State and the Seattle area it suddenly became approachable. I started with two books by Rowan Jacobsen, A Geography of Oysters and The Essential Oyster which were both easy texts to navigate based on specific appellations. I encouraged myself to go in with a beginner’s mindset, with the simple intention “to learn a little bit.”
It wasn’t about becoming an expert but rather deepening my experience. The thing is a dozen oysters are expensive and disappear quickly. By knowing just a little bit, I knew I could create space for more enjoyment, presence, engagement and authenticity. And maybe even be able to tell the difference of one oyster from another.
I selectively flipped through the books and familiarized myself with some of the local oyster varieties that thrive and are prolific in Seattle – varieties such as Hama Hama, Baywater Sweet, Kumamoto and Olympia are a few of the more common. These ones, the local ones, are what I wanted to try at an oyster bar.
On the pages that featured these varieties, I paid attention to individual shells in terms of size, shape and cup depth. Very basic details like big or small, deep or shallow.
After that I focused on taste and challenged myself to learn a little of what differentiates one variety’s flavor from another. I studied words commonly used to describe oysters and thus tried to teach my tastebuds what to look for. They might be sweet, metallic, coppery, briny or nutty, or might have a honeydew or cucumber finish or celery salt flavor. I wasn’t trying to be able to pass a blind taste test, but I wanted vocabulary to say something other than, “They taste like the ocean.”
On our trip, for the ultimate oyster experience, we drove out to Taylor Shellfish Farm’s Samish Bay location. Since 1890 they have supplied many restaurants in the city, and at this location they offer a true tide to table experience, a true meal-of-a-lifetime experience!
We gathered stools around a wooden high-top table at their waterfront picnic area and shared a charcuterie board and a mixed dozen oysters. The freshly shucked Pacific Northwest oysters I’d been waiting for. Paired with good company, gorgeous views, and local pale ales. Squeezed lemon juice on our fingers, sitting together in the sunshine, it was a living dream.
Of the three varieties on our tray, two were species I’d read about — Pacific and Kumamoto — both among the most popular of oysters. The third, called Fat Bastard, was new to me. Fat Bastards are big, approximately a 2.75 – 3.75-inch shell. I took a minute to observe and noticed aside from the larger shell size, they also have a notably deeper cup compared to the others.
The Kumamotos were much smaller, approximately a 1 – 2-inch shell. I remembered being surprised to learn that they grow very slowly, taking up to 4 years to cultivate vs 1 year for many larger oyster varieties. Because of this they are more expensive and also pack a lot of flavor.
The Pacifics on our tray had lovely, ruffled shells, approximately 2.5-inches. They are Taylor’s “#1 oyster, famous for its sweet-and-salty cucumber flavor.”
I tried each type and did so with only squeezed lemon, no cocktail sauce. This made it feel like maybe the first time I’d ever actually tasted an oyster rather than masking it beneath horseradish, ketchup and Tabasco. My taste buds were alive. Sweet and salty umami. Chewy, pudgy, weird and absolutely wonderful.
I won’t lie, that dozen oysters still vanished quickly, even after the studying I did. But this particular dozen has left a lasting, iridescent, shiny pearl of an impression on me, and I look forward to honing my tastes even more. Cheers to the next twelve!
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?
wan·der verb \ˈwän-dər\ to walk/explore/amble in an unplanned or aimless way with a complete openness to the unknown
I happened upon a few fun ways to browse books while reading The Wander Society by Keri Smith. This odd, refreshing little book is filled with information and activities related to wandering, walking, observing, and putting down your phone. Smith makes a case for things we often don’t allow for ourselves: daydreaming, randomness, and boredom. She presents possible assignments, research, and field work for the reader to embark on.
There is one assignment specifically dedicated to “Library Wandering.” In that section of the book, she offers, “Some Ways to Subvert Your Browsing.” Maybe I’m bookish and biased, but I found this very exciting. I opened the book to the page number listed and ventured out into the stacks with a tote bag, curious to see where her suggestions would lead me.
1. “Find a book that interests you, and leave it on the shelves. Count seven books down from that one. Read that book.”
This suggestion is a perfect example of how Smith encourages randomness and nonattachment. I located a psychological thriller that looked interesting in the fiction stacks, The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne. Instead of taking that one from the shelf I counted, like Smith suggests, seven books away from it and landed on The Dragon Man: A Detective Inspector Hal Challis Murder Mystery by Garry Disher. I’ve never in my life read a police procedural novel which meant this browsing experiment was already working, guiding me to a genre I wouldn’t ordinarily gravitate toward. I like mystery thrillers in the form of tv shows and movies, why have I never read one? Now was my chance. I slid the book in my bag and moved on to the next list item.
2. “Locate the first five blue books you see. Take those to a reading chair.”
This task was surprisingly easy and fun and is something I will try in the future with different colors. With the blue stack specifically, I decided I would take the books I selected to a chair and read the synopses to decide which ones to take home. I thought about challenging myself to commit to reading all of them, but this way of browsing adds a lot of weight to your bag and your reading load, should you choose to take all five. But with five to choose from, you’re likely to select at least one that really appeals to you. I took home Lily and the Octopus.
3. “Find a favorite book of yours. Look in the bibliography. Pick a book listed there. Find that book and read it.”
This was probably the most challenging and time-consuming suggestion. Not all books have a bibliography, so you might have to pull a few off the shelf before finding one. Once I found one with a bibliography, I needed to check the library catalog for listed titles’ availability. Braiding Sweetgrass, a favorite book of mine, has a long list of sources in the back. From that list I chose Grandmothers of the Light, a book about goddess stories, ancient myths and spirituality.
4. “Ask the librarian what his or her favorite book is. Locate it and read it.”
If you are a frequent flyer here at Bexley Public Library, you know our librarians have great reading suggestions. On the particular day I was browsing, I asked our librarian Leah what her favorite book is. She gave me two recent favorites. The Lido, which she said is “a feel-good read about people coming together that would appeal to many different age groups.” And The Reading List which she loved and keeps thinking about having a book club for — the initial meeting would be for the actual book and the following meetings for the books mentioned in the book. How fun would that be!
5. “Find an author with the same last name as you. Read the book. (If you can’t find one, locate the closest name to it.)”
This was my last task. I looked but discovered there were no fiction authors on the shelf that share my last name. So, I walked over to Biographies to check there. Again, none of the books featured my last name, so I chose one whose author’s last name starts with the same letter as mine. I’ve read and enjoyed other titles by Melissa Febos, so Abandon Me was a definite win.
Overall, I have to say, this was such a fun experiment! Smith offers these task ideas as suggestions, and from there you get to make/bend the rules. There is no pressure, no right or wrong way to locate books. Try every task, or don’t. Read every book you pull, or don’t. Feel free to challenge yourself to read them all. I might try it. I’d like to keep track in my reading journal and see how it goes. In the end, the point is to discover books that aren’t on your radar and maybe never would’ve been. It’s rewarding to find a new favorite author or that you like a genre you’d previously steered clear of.
What exciting discoveries might await you? Come wander the stacks and find out.
It’s going to be a hot one this week folks, and we’re here today to spark up reading and listening inspiration for the season we’ve all been waiting for — summer! If you’re looking for something to make your days dreamy and luminous, you’ve come to the right place.
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.
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.
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.”
Shorter days make me nostalgic for the winter evenings I sat on a low stool, my back warm in front of a fire that my mother built with logs my father stacked all summer. We’d decorate the tree after Thanksgiving with multicolored lights, salt dough angels and crocheted snowflakes.
Earlier this month the library hosted award-winning poet Rikki Santer for a reading from her new poetry collection, Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me. Her new work is a rich homage to the vision and joy of surrealist painter, Leonora Carrington.
