Books to Movies: 2017 and Beyond

Want to catch up on must-reads books before they become movies? Are you excited to see – or dreading to watch – your favorite characters come to life? Here are some of the most anticipated adaptations coming to a screen near you. Check out the books now, while there’s still time!

Films to inspire you to change the world: Recommended picks from Seattle’s Social Justice Film Festival

Our guest post today is thanks to Michelle Dillon, librarian for Seattle’s groundbreaking and award-winning Books to Prisoners, a non-profit organization that puts thousands of books into the hands of incarcerated individuals each year. Learn more about the importance of this work in promoting literacy and reducing recidivism in this recent article from The Guardian, and learn about how you can support this cause at the Books to Prisoners website.  – Editor

Filmmakers have precious few moments to motivate you: to make you laugh, to move you to tears, or to lay bare important issues. The most resonant movies are often those which challenge your perceptions and expand your understanding of society. Seattle’s upcoming Social Justice Film Festival, running October 14-25, brings together 52 films on global issues of worker rights, immigration, indigenous rights, prisoner justice, Black Lives Matter, government surveillance, and much more. We are showcasing three selections from past years at the festival—each of which is available through the Seattle Public Library. These films shed light on urgent inequities—and might inspire you to take action in your own community.

Mary Ellen Mark: Eyeing Life

Follow us throughout the fall for posts which highlight library resources and information that support the Tiny: Streetwise Revisited exhibit at the Central Library and its community programming.

The undiffused difference between the placid suburb of her youth and the rough-edged city that surrounded it became quickly apparent. In she went with her lens widening as a jagged journey ensued. Lengths and dimensions of lives spread across cityscapes of lost dreams, nightmarish realities, and undying hope.

Tiny on Pike Street Seattle, Washington, 1983

Mary Ellen Mark made her mark when the book Streetwise was first published in 1988.  Within the reeking insides of a city, runaway children observed yet another stranger inserting herself into the frame of their lives.  Who else could she be except a question dangling itself before their eyes until it, too, disappeared after having received an answering look.

Look, I don’t have to tell you that in this world there are streets not meant to be crossed and sidewalks one dare not step onto less the last step at the far end of the block means curbing your own life. The innocent are not spared, the guilty go on to greater gory and there, midway, on that tumultuous street is a woman with a camera that haunts the harm.  She knows how, even absent the suburban enclave of a carefully manicured life, life remains hungry for itself.  A woman with a camera arrives a stranger and leaves with your face in her hands.

Upcoming Thrilling Tales from our Story Time for Grown Ups.

For over a decade, every other Monday at noon listeners have flocked to Thrilling Tales, the Library’s story time for grownups, spending their lunch hour rapt in suspenseful narratives. Janice Leadingham, a local bookseller said in a recent article in City Arts: “Especially for impatient people, it’s good because it slows things down a bit. For one hour, you can just be.” In a recent front page article in The Seattle Times, audience member Zachary Valenter said of Thrilling Tales emcee David Wright, “He’s one of the best storytellers I’ve ever listened to. We come every week that he does the show.”

Find out what all the fuss is about: drop by the Central Library at five minutes past noon on any of the following days, and remember just how fun it was to sit back, relax and be read to.

Missing Mad Men? Meet the Real Don Draper

I miss Mad Men. Not any particular character or plot line: I miss the feel of it. That blend of humor and heartbreak, tinged with an uneasy dread that one might easily assume to be bygone innocence viewed through the lens of contemporary disillusionment and cynicism. Yet far more that the show’s meticulous period details and cultural conventions, the most authentically vintage aspect of Mad Men was that very sense of mid-century malaise, reflected by the books and movies of the time.