The Seattlest Curmudgeon strikes again, this time, in favor of libraries. So, see? We're not all haters. more ›

Just a friendly warning from your book-loving friends here at Seattlest: if you were planning on picking up some final summertime reading next weekend, you'll be out of luck. more ›

Reading Room I by Mr. McPants from the Seattlest Flickr pool. more ›

Driving may get a little more expensive, one fewer school district job to bungle, plus, a perfect storm of awesome this weekend. more ›

Hey, slacker. You've got a few more days to get your taxes done. Get 'em prepared for free, with your friends at the library. more ›

Seattle’s own librarian extraordinaire Nancy Pearl is adding two more accolades to her curriculum vitae this evening at Elliott Bay Book Company, where her long-time publisher Sasquatch Books will present awards for lifetime achievement from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and for 2011 Librarian of the Year from the Library Journal. The only librarian (that we know of) with her very own action figure, Pearl is the former executive director of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library; the author of half a dozen books on, well, loving books, including Book Lust and Book Crush; and the brains behind the “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book” program that spread across the country in the late ’90s. She also regularly contributes her literary recommendations to NPR and was the 50th recipient of the Women’s National Book Association Award in 2004. Sasquatch president Gary Luke will be on hand this evening to sing Pearl’s praises, and Pearl herself will give a brief talk. And as if there already wasn’t enough reason to add these festivities to your evening schedule, the presentation is free and open to the public — which can also imbibe on complimentary wine and nosh on free apps. more ›

You know what sunny and 76 degrees is? Perfect outdoor reading weather, that’s what. Good thing the Friends of the Seattle Public Library are hosting a flash mob reading party at Westlake Center on Friday at noon, just in time for you to escape your cubicle for a glorious it’s-almost-the-weekend lunch break. The group is hoping Seattleites will band together with their favorite books to demonstrate their love of reading and of our fair city’s public libraries. So pick a slab of zig-zaggy concrete and get reading. And maybe get a hint of a tan while you’re at it. more ›

• The big news in local blogs today is the Seattle Times "collaboration" with hyperlocal blogstars such as West Seattle Blog, MyBallard, Capitol Hill Seattle, and Rainier Valley Post. Sure, there's warranted kicking and screaming about anything to do with the Times and online media, but is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship?
• Speaking of hyperlocal news, belltownpeople (giddy about being the densest neighborhood in Seattle) and CHS broke out mayoral race votes by 'hood.

Your message would be far more effective if you learned how to spell its subject correctly. more ›

Back where we come from, there's places known as "cooling centers". These are public buildings that are air-conditioned in the event of a deadly heatwave such as the one in which we currently find ourselves embroiled. We remember our afternoon cartoons being interrupted by ticker-style warnings about the heat and the elderly and cooling centers for those without A/C in the home. Libraries were the foremost among the list of these cooling centers. more ›

"Untitled" by zeebleoop , from the Seattlest Flickr pool more ›

Sadly, outside of the families and friends who have lost people to the tragedy—and maybe a few New Yorkers in general—the unfortunate majority of those who invoke <reverb>9/11</reverb> employ it as frothy, rhetorical masturbation to punctuate their own grandstanding, demagoguery, and ideologies. Partisan journalists on all sides of the biased media lap up the secretions in their attempts to snowball you, dear media consumer. more ›

Ten years ago, during the height of the dot-com boom, Seattleites voted to spend almost $200 million to update all of the libraries in our system and to add four new neighborhood branches to it. This week, the Libraries for All Initiative comes to an official close and we thought that, in honor of such a magnificent and useful achievement, we’d allow ourselves the oddity of crushing—for this week only—on an inanimate object: Seattle Public Libraries. We are a bunch of writers who dearly love our books, after all. more ›