Because sometimes it's just a drive-by photo post of flowers

Lily of the valley with a hint of sweet William

Peony, lilac, columbine, and spray of fennel frond

Iris, geranium, rose, columbine, forget-me-not, "Ballard flower," and "that weird spiky purple thing"

Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, 2026 edition

This year's planning strategy

It's Seattle Independent Bookstore Day Eve chez Aurora. We've been doing this for a decade or more now, and perhaps we've finally reached the Shipton and Tilman level, in which the planning fits tidily on the back of an envelope.

There are now thirty-three bookstores participating in what is laughingly called the Seattle Independent Bookstore Challenge. In reality, the Seattle Passport includes stores in Kirkland, Mercer Island, Edmonds, Burien, Poulsbo, Bremerton, Shoreline, Kingston, Redmond, and Bainbridge Island, and, goshdarnitall, that's just The Crazy. And we're just not going along with it, at least not on Saturday. As it is, we won't make it to every store in Seattle even. Not by bike. Not starting at our local that opens at 10:00 am. Not and end up at Oaxaca for a celebratory dinner which is, I tell you, a non-negotiable for both of us.

With age, I tell you, comes wisdom. We're going to the bookstores we like most and that we can reach without too much anguish. Oh, I'd like to visit Magnolia's Bookstore tomorrow on what I consider to truly be Independent Bookstore Day because I absolutely adore that bookstore. Both of us would prefer to hit Open Books tomorrow too. But Magnolia is fairly isolated and closes at 6:00 pm, while Open Books is located near the start of our run but doesn't open until noon. It's not inconceivable that we should somehow squeeze them in, but it's not exactly what you'd call likely. 

I'm crossing my fingers we manage to reach eleven stores tomorrow and find them open and stocked with books we are eager to buy. That seems a reasonable, rational approach to the day.

Follow-up post of the results sure(ish) to come. 

Seattle Public Libraries Passport Fun!

Cut-paper art done by a staff member at SPL's Southwest Branch

 If the Imaginary Reader knows the most basic essentials about my character, then they know that I can never resist a passport project that involves traveling around by bike getting stamps. I was, therefore, the ideal market for Seattle Public Libraries' passport and postcard promotion in which one could fill a library passport with stamps from each and every branch of SPL and get a postcard featuring that library* to boot. For free! Just for asking! 

Final passport**

Earlier this week I collected my final stamp--from the Broadview branch. There was no big fanfare though the librarian there asked me which branch I'd liked best. I told him that was an impossible question to answer, but that I could say which one had surprised me the most: the Southwest Branch. Southwest is not an attractive building from the outside and, very oddly, it is closed on Saturdays as Scott and I discovered when we biked there after a visit to Fresh Flours. But I gamely returned during the week and discovered the amazing artwork featured above and some of the friendliest librarians imaginable inside that ugly building. And the Birdhouse is less than a block away!

 It's been swell to have a reason to get out and explore some new neighborhoods over the last several months. Yes, months. I collected my first postcard at the Columbia City branch last fall sometime. At that time I didn't know about the passport stamp business so I had to stop by there again as part of my "by light rail" day on which I got a handful of bike miles and a lot of value out of my orca card. 

  I shouldn't have been surprised to find that almost every single librarian I interacted with was friendly and helpful--to an amazing degree. The person at the Southwest branch found a couple of stickers to use so that the ink wouldn't smear where I'd covered up an earlier (misplaced) stamp. The woman at the Magnolia branch was so troubled by the failure of her stamp to fully absorb the ink that she found a second, less-battered stamp to use and helped me affix that new, improved version in place. The "learned something new" person at the Northeast Branch told me about the forgotten room discovered at the University District branch during its renovations (currently closed so no stamp from them, though I got a U-district postcard from the NE woman), while the Lake City librarian enthused about their branch's George Tsutakawa gate--and told me about how his only other gate in the city had been stolen from the Arboretum during COVID. (His son then replaced that one, using his father's old plans.)

One of Lake City's gates (there's a much better image on their website)

I was also struck by the "beyond books and DVDs" nature of several of the branches. Oh, they all had computers for public use (and plenty of public making use of them), but a number of branches also offered basic essentials and Green Lake even has a visiting food pantry. (The Wallingford branch is tiny, but it's adjacent to a local food bank.)

I'm not sure if my definition of "great public art" is exactly what the designers of this program had in mind; I know that the Central Library downtown is supposed to be gobsmacking, but what I liked most was a bit more homey:

No longer accurate, but delightful nonetheless (Queen Anne branch)

New Holly branch pillar (Superman is dropping books on Seattle)

 And of course there has to be an obligatory bike shot:

The weirdest bike racks ever (but at least they had them!)

The postcard haul . . .

\

And a final reason why I love living in Seattle and love its library system:

*The Madrona-Sally Goldmark Branch was out of postcards!

**Predictably, I replaced a few of the categories with my own.

It's been a minute

Selection of books mentioned in this post (plus an aging bouquet)

The thing is, I've not been inclined to post so much for considerably more than a minute, even in its most current, slangy sense. It all seems sort of pointless, you know? What sort of posts would the average German woman be writing in 1939, you know? As it happens, I can answer that, because I bought  On The Other Side: Letters To My Children From Germany 1940 - 46 when we were at the Persephone shop in Bath a few years back. It seems that one just sort of goes on with the quotidian of existence, regardless, and that's pretty much what I've been doing. 

For me that means a fair bit of reading so I've decided to post a reading recap here, rather than wait until the end of the year. Possibly because I don't have so much certainty about the end of the year, the way things are going. Happy thoughts. Books then, in reverse order, because that's how I do things. I expect this list to become vaguer about the books as we go along. Let's see, shall we?

The Tainted Cup  I put my name on the lengthy hold list for this at Seattle Public Library (hereinafter SPL) after asking Victoria, from whom we buy our goat cheese at the farmers market, what she was reading. It's sort of a Mycroft Holmes-esque mystery in a fantasy setting. I found it surprisingly engrossing and have since put my name down for the sequel at SPL.

Little Weirds  This one was also a recommendation, this time from an anonymous librarian. In addition to reading, I'm filling my idle hours by collecting SPL passport stamps (another post, perhaps, some day), which means I'm going to a lot of new-to-me library branches. This collection of short essays from a stand-up comic/actress is sort of a mixed bag; just when I found myself thinking she was insufferably shallow, she'd say something particularly insightful. 

 Runaway Horses  Another library book from another SPL branch display, this time all the books on the display had a horse component because it's now the Year of the Horse. I thought this was an Italian mystery and it sort of is, but mostly it was just fucking weird. (On the up side, googling for the Iain Pears mystery series that I thought about referencing here, led me to discover that Mr Pears has written a couple of new books since I last checked in on him--hurrah!)

Castle Richmond  The long-time Imaginary Reader will realize that things were seeming particularly bleak a few weeks back for I turned to the Trollope shelf for distraction. Sadly, this stand-alone novel was set during the Irish Famine and so a little less fully escapist than I might have hoped. The main story was pretty decent though there was shockingly little in the way of foxhunting.

Murder in Mesopotamia  It's sort of too bad that this list is in reverse chronological order because this was the last of the Agatha Christie re-reads, rather than the first. Poirot enters, as I dimly recall, on about page 180.

Cat Among the Pigeons  Or maybe this is the one in which Poirot is a very late addition to the story. A murder set in a girls school, several characters make use of the titular phrase which struck me as a little odd.

 4:50 from Paddington  Jane Marple this time, with a plucky young sidekick / stand-in.

Two Women Living Together  Another book from SPL (as were, come to think of it, the Agatha Christies), possibly from the Peak Picks display. Nonfiction, for a change, this one is written in alternating chapters by the two women in question. They're friends and roommates, not romantically involved, and the book offers a window into daily life and concerns for unmarried Korean women. I liked it, rather.

Mrs Christie at the Mystery Guild Library  The book that (obviously) inspired the Christie kick already recorded. This again came from SPL (do admire how financially responsible I've become!), checked out because, well, why wouldn't I? It's a mystery set in more or less present-day NYC, featuring a ghostly Agatha Christie, and it was a bit of a hoot.

The Lincoln Highway  A serendipitous read--I found this in a Little Free Library while on a bike ride and I was between books. I'd read Mr Towle's previous blockbuster and liked it okay (while not seeing what all the fuss was about) so I figured I'd give this one a try. It was much the same: a good time while not exactly earth-shattering. And a bit morally ambiguous in the end, which I found surprising and refreshing.

Halcyon  Alas, we have come to the first real stinker of the list. Thankfully, this was another SPL book so only my time was squandered. I have no one to blame but myself; I was attracted to the font of the title on the spine and the flap-copy was intriguing. But the story itself was sloppily written and, oh, just painful to read.

The Way to Colonos  The first one I've drawn a blank on, though looking at the link I see it's the retelling of three Greek myths/stories, originally published in the early 1960s. You know how books written in the 1960s often feel oddly dated and sort of permeated with an air of self-conscious thrashing against societal constraints? This is one of those.

Five Found Dead  Another title that now draws a blank. Unsurprisingly, it's another mystery, this time by Sulari Gentill, some of whose books I've really liked while others have been a bit so-so. This one falls on the more favorable end of so-so. Also checked out from SPL. (I'm determined to get my money's worth on my local taxes, apparently.)

A brief intermission to note that I heard somewhere that mysteries are popular because they make people feel like there's order in life, that things happen for a reason, that there's a logic at work. And that when people do bad things, they get found out and punished. Which might explain why I've been reading so many mysteries this year.

The Correspondent  Another one checked out from SPL, this time based largely on the cover art though I also had read a good review of it. The reference librarian looked at the book enviously and said she was looking forward to reading it herself, so I had some reason to have high expectations. Shockingly, given that it's an epistolary novel and I still have PTSD from Pamela, it did not disappoint. This is possibly the best written-for-adults book I've read this year.

Rock, Paper, Incisors  The third in a series of children's books about two friends and not-romantically-involved roommates, Skunk and Badger. A lot of the action in this installment revolves around the couple of orphaned rats they have taken in. Yes, these books are the reason I have to qualify my "best read" endorsement of The Correspondent above with "written for adults." 

The Mystery Writer  This mystery novel by Sulari Gentill starts off much stronger than the one listed above, but it becomes seriously unbelievable in the final sections. Great characters, somewhat absurd plot.

The Black Wolf   It saddens me to say--and I will refuse to be held to it--but I sort of think the time has come for Louise Penny and me to part company. I get that she doesn't want to write cozy mysteries for the rest of her life and that there's only so much she can do with the population of Three Pines, but the increasingly extreme international conspiracies . . . Well, I was going to say that the plots are just getting too outlandish, but given recent events, I sort of feel that maybe they're just too realistic. Regardless, it's not really my sort of thing.

The Dog of the South Another sort of stinker--and this time I own the book. I loved Portis' True Grit, but this one just left me fairly cold. The style is sort of Lolita-esque in some way that I'm just incapable of detailing. Meh.

Eyes of the Rigel  Translated from Norwegian, this is the third in a series that is just so fine. Not a ton happens and it's slow moving and somehow spare and it's just lovely. I'm happy this one is on my shelf.

A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband  My mother bought this odd cookbook--though I swear it had a different title--at a yard sale when I was a child and I was charmed by the little stories that introduced each batch of recipes. I was ever so pleased to track it down some months back and order a copy of my own for my mother's has long since disappeared. The edition I got clearly resulted from someone scanning an existing book and hastily reassembling the layout; the typesetting is awful and the index is a mess. And, for the record, the recipes are truly vile; I made one of them and I won't make that mistake again. But Bettina is just as charmingly know-it-all as I remembered.

The Paris Apartment  A sort of far-fetched but still engaging enough mystery. I checked this one out of SPL because a friend had mentioned reading a Lucy Foley novel, and while the local branch didn't have the book she was reading, they had The Paris Apartment. If nothing else, it made me remember fondly the place Scott and I rented in Paris a decade ago. We should go back. And maybe just never leave.

Egg Marks the Spot  The second in the Skunk and Badger series, this might be the weakest of the three. It seems to me that the truly best children's stories of this sort (and I'm deliberately leaving that vague because I'm not sure what "this sort" is) don't have a real villain in them; the protagonists may have to overcome some obstacles, but there's no one actively bad in the story. There's a villain in this installment so it's a little weaker than the first and third volumes, but it's still a good time and features a Very Surprising Development.

The Luminaries  I'd pretty much forgotten this book entirely despite it being one I bought (at Paper Boat Booksellers) based, I think, on a shelf talker recommendation. It wasn't awful, but I also didn't love it. As the review I've linked to puts it, "as we read on, we don't read in." I'd forgotten how the final forty pages or so are essentially just notes for how the chapters might be written. Forget the "not awful"; that ending was just fucking lazy.

"Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," said the Sloth  Okay, so I bought this boardbook to give to my new nephew; I had to read it first to be sure it was appropriate, right? Sloth knows how to approach existence. Recommended for all ages!

Wintering  This one (also borrowed from SPL) was recommended by a friend, but--forgive the pun--it left me cold. It was less a how-to than a "why-I-did" and I just didn't care all that much about the author or her issues.

All the Birds, Singing  A Christmas present from Scott, I hadn't heard of this and I don't think he really knew a lot about it either. It was a weird, dark-dark-dark sort of book that just got weirder and darker as it went along. I loved it.

Books of 2025!

 

Somewhat unrelated snap of some bookstore day purchases to add some visual interest

It's rare that I actually get around to doing a recap of my reading of the previous year, but our NYE plans were damned quiet this year so I started in on the following while waiting for midnight to strike. It was a total of 83 books read with a fair number of re-reads and only a small handful of non-fiction. A surprising number of Kate Atkinson titles; I think I read more of her books than Trollope's! But I suspect Trollope still rules when it comes to word count. Only a few real stinkers, with more books pleasantly surprising me than not so, all in all, a pretty good year for reading. 

  Alas, it seems that the links aren't surviving the cut-and-paste process, but there are links to all the titles in the books read in the sidebar, should the Imaginary Reader want to know more about the books listed. Sorry!

Skunk and Badger  . . . a fine children’s book that I got for Christmas and read in a day

A Place Just for Me . . . a very young children’s book with charming illustrations

Death of the Author . . . a meh sci-fi, faux lit book recommended by the Seattle Public Library when the book I wanted wasn’t going to be available for a while

Mulliner Nights . . . a surprisingly entertaining PG Wodehouse that doesn’t feature Bertie Wooster

Raising Hare . . . a charming and educational book about a woman and the hare who shared her life for a while

The Paris Express . . . based on an actual train disaster, not dreadfully interesting or nearly so good as its blurbs

Damned If I Do . . . surprisingly excellent (and varied) short story collection by the author of James

Telephone . . . an incredibly depressing—but good—novel by Percival Everett (aka “author of James")

Sense and Sensibility . . . sometimes I just want some Austen, but does anyone think that Marianne and the Colonel are well-suited?

A Thousand Splendid Suns . . . well-written but so much detail about the hopelessness of women’s lives that it felt somehow pornographic

The House of Silk . . . Watson and Holmes as portrayed by Anthony Horowitz. Not bad, but not great either

The Grey Wolf . . . Gamache never ages. It’s starting to bother me.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul . . . more comfort reading in the form of Dirk Gently. Not as good as . . .

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency . . .      a fine bit of escape with Dirk Gently; fascinating to find Douglas Adams going on a bit about AI back in the 1980s

The Confession of a False Soul . . . a weird little NYRB tale (in which people get used souls implanted in place of their worn-out old ones) that was short enough to read during one day’s long Metro commute

A God in Ruins . . . Kate Atkinson revisits the characters of Life After Life when maybe she should have just left them alone

The Searcher . . . the second of a Tana French trilogy of sorts. Some very unexpected plot twists and just excellent characters

Behind the Scenes at the Museum . . . I think this is the Kate Atkinson book in which I realized that minor characters were returned to just so that something awful could happen to them.

Normal Rules Don't Apply . . . I was obviously on a Kate Atkinson tear; these not-immediately-obviously connected short stories were quite fine and added up in a way I didn’t expect.

The Hunter . . . the first in the Tana French trilogy: excellent characters and fine writing

The Princess Bride . . . just as good as I’d remembered and even better than the movie

The Hedgehog's Dilemma . . . I didn’t realize that “the hedgehog’s dilemma” was some sort of classic philosophical/psychological concept until after I’d finished this odd little book in which a hedgehog both wants and doesn’t want company.

What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust . . . I thought Flavia de Luca deserved a second chance. I still just don’t see the attraction.

Goats in America . . . a fascinating history of goats. In America. Truly eye-opening. Now I have to be more particular about where my chèvre comes from than ever.

The Moonstone . . . a classic for a reason; I enjoyed this re-read even if, sadly, I remembered too much of the plot for it to work as a mystery.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye . . . I can’t remember why I checked this out of the library. It turned out to be even more slight than I’d expected—and my expectations weren’t high.

The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years . . . the djinn has a pretty minor role (was there even a djinn?), but not a bad read otherwise

A Month in the Country . . . I remember liking this, but I don’t remember much in the way of detail.

Storybook Ending . . . another library-impulse item. Not brilliant.

The Old Bank House . . . an Angela Thirkell to refresh the palate.

The Man Who Didn't Fly . . . apparently a classic mystery for reasons I do not understand

Shrines of Gaiety . . . Kate Atkinson again in a book that didn’t quite add up

Mornings without Mii . . . as it turned out, this was mostly mornings with Mii and since Mii was a cat I was happy about that

The Lacuna . . . a Barbara Kingsolver I bought used some years back and finally picked up to read. Lots about Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky. Pretty excellent.

David Copperfield . . . donkeys! And also Uriah Heep and many other colorful characters. Sometimes Dickens is just what you want.

Dorothy Parker Drank Here . . . Dorothy is a ghost that only some people can see sometimes. She cracks wise.

The Children Who Lived in a Barn . . . the favorite Persephone title that features a haybox.

Greenery Street . . . another Persephone. Alas, the young couple lack a haybox, but otherwise excellent.

Rachel Ray . . . Trollope! It turned out to be one I’d read before but does that matter?

The Left Hand of Darkness . . . okay, I’ll say it: I’m just not sure that I understand why Ursula LeGuin has the following she does

How Do You Live? . . . this turned out to be some sort of book of moral instruction for children which I didn’t realize at first.

The Book of Lost Hours . . . a weird fantasy featuring people living in a world of books sort of. It was okay

White Nights . . . three longish short stories by Dostoyevski.

Windcliff . . . that rarest of creatures, a non-fiction title on my list of books read. “Windcliff” was a garden; this is the story of its development or the development of its creator.

Life After Life . . . the original Kate Atkinson for me maybe? A girl / woman keeps changing one thing and thus changing everything in her immediate world. Sort of cool.

The Last Chronicle of Barset  . . . the final book in the Barchester series so I’m pretty sure that the five earlier titles will appear below.

The Exiles Return . . . purchased in person at the Persephone shop in Bath last year. Germans return to Germany after World War II. It doesn’t always go well.

The Bones at Point No Point . . . a self-published mystery set on the Olympic Peninsula purchased on Bookstore Day. Not great.

The Small House at Allington . . . the fifth in the Barchester series

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms . . . I loved N.K. Jemisin’s books set in NYC, but her more serious/hardcore sci-fi didn’t do a lot for me.

Case Histories . . . okay, I lied. This may have been my first Kate Atkinson. It’s a Jackson Brodie mystery, and I just didn’t much care for him or for it.

Framley Parsonage . . . fourth in Trollope’s Barchester series.

Chenneville . . . this one took a bit for me to get into, but it wasn’t bad. By the author of News of the World (which was truly excellent)

Remainders of the Day . . . diary of a bookseller based, I think, in Northern England. I thought it would be dull, but I truly found it quite engaging.

We'll Prescribe You a Cat . . . one of those Japanese cat-lit books with an irresistible cover. It was actually quite fine.

Doctor Thorne . . . Trollope. Barchester. Life-sustaining.

Transcription . . . damn it! How many Kate Atkinsons have I read? I enjoyed this one enough to want to read more of her books.

Barchester Towers . . . Trollope. Again.

The Warden . . . the first of the Barchester series. It’s my least favorite of the lot, actually, but was better on this re-reading.

A World of Curiosities . . . a Louise Penny that I reread after reading her newest one because I thought I could use some background to make sense of it.  A bit creepy and not entirely believable.

The Grey Wolf . . . the newest Louise Penny at the time. It didn’t seem up to par, truth to tell, and yet I seemingly read it twice in the same year. Go figure.

The River Has Roots . . . a “Peak Pick” at the library and by the coauthor of How You Lose the Time War which I rather liked. This one was weird, but it was also good.

The Mystery of Henri Pick . . .the mystery was why it was published, possibly.

The Life of Herod the Great . . . but Henri Pick was a lot better than Herod. Zora Neale Hurston undoubtedly was a great writer, but this one was stinko.

The Twist of a Knife . . . an Anthony Horowitz mystery featuring Daniel Hawthorne. Rollicking good time.

The Mighty Red . . .  Louise Erdrich is one of those writers I never think I’m going to like and then I do. This one was no exception.

The Word is Murder . . . Anthony Horowitz again.

Close to Death . . .and again.

Orbital . . . Booker winner with lots of good press, but I sort of hated it.

Pickwick Papers . . . I don’t know that I’d ever read this classic Dickens before. It was not what I expected—quite charming and pretty political.

I Am Not Cursed . . . the story of Persephone in verse that I bought because I met the author. It then sat around for quite some time, but it turns out to be quite lovely and fine.

There Are Rivers in the Sky . . . Elif Shafak so you know I liked it; this story uses a drop of water to connect the story across millennia

How We Learn to Be Brave . . . I was a bit disappointed by this book by Bishop Budde since it wasn’t so much a “how-to.”

White Shadow . . . part of Roy Jacobsen’s continuing saga of life on an island somewhere in Scandinavia if a saga can be incredibly bare-boned.

Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite . . . with a title like that, it’s got to be Trollope.

The Heart of Winter . . . Jon Evison’s latest. It wasn’t my favorite.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep . . .  another re-read

Breaking & Mending . . . by the author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, a nonfiction account of being a doctor in England; it’s not all tea and crumpets.

The Fraud . . . aha! This is the book I keep vaguely remembering with its not-so-subtle skewering of Dickens!

A Death in Summer . . . this book, however, left absolutely no impression on me whatsoever; I don’t remember it even after rereading the linked review.

On the Other Side . . . another Persephone Shop purchase, this book consists of letters written by a mother in Germany during World War II to her children in Allied countries. It’s not clear until the end that she never sent them, making it all sort of reminiscent of The Bolos’ “Letters” song.

The Eyre Affair . . . Jasper Fforde, how I do adore you! A reread of the first of the Thursday Next books. (I am shocked to find that many people I know and like are completely unaware of Thursday Next.)

The Way We Live Now . . . a Trollope that turned out to be far too au courant: a horrible and revolting seemingly wealthy man rises to a position of power and influence. I felt rather betrayed.

Happy 2026!

No Kings II in Seattle, largely in photos

This one just made me laugh.

Kindred spirits, round 1

More kindred spirits--the other side of the kindred spirits above

I love good puns.

Go MARINERS!

. . . and the flip side--I love a hometown crowd.

This one reminded me of Karen Molenaar.

No additional caption required

And I vote

Raccoon

Toilets were sort of a theme.

I'm not sure who the actor is, but I liked this one.

I rubbed its nose. That's supposed to guarantee that my democracy survives.

I'm sure I should know this creature, but I don't.

This one is clearly a cat. Which were a theme.

Ca

Chickens with attitude

Crowd scene

Crab or lobster? I'm not sure.

Donald in chains--a crowd favorite

Exactly.

Again, it's the clever I can't resist.

One of many cat-themed sign

The best of the animal costumes

Exactly, #2

Again with the cleverness of the Left

Talking to you, Johnson!

Cha!

Unicorn and Dinosaur are friends.

Time travelers, I'm guessing

Because sometimes rude is funny

I'm also fond of succinct.

Seattle slug power!

Another cat sign

To the point

I didn't even notice what was in the cat's mouth here.

Blogger threatens to have a breakdown with all these photos so I'll just add that No Kings 2 in Seattle was a good time. A decent crowd, many clever signs, some inspiring speakers, and the rain held off until the homeward commute. It sort of poured then, sadly, but we had some hot tea once our soggy selves (and bikes) reached home.

Truth