Horrorfest on Kanopy

For those of us finding ourselves spending extra time with housemates or family, horror movie marathons are an excellent way to pass the days. If you’ve exhausted the movie options on your go-to streaming subscription service, Kanopy has an incredible selection of films that are free to access with your library card. Here are a few diverse and international scary films all released within the last 10 years that you can start watching tonight! (Important note: most of these films are only appropriate for adults; please use discretion if watching with younger family members.)

Florence Pugh makes up her mind in Midsommar

If you missed Midsommar when it came out in theaters last summer, now is a perfect time to catch up – for free! This film shows what happens when a small group of American graduate students travel to Sweden for an obscure (and chilling) midsummer festival, inverting traditional horror tropes as the entire plot unravels during the bright light of day.

Stay-at-Home Drive-In Movie Madness!!

After regular movie theaters have suspended operations, many couples and families have rediscovered Drive-In Movie Theaters, where social distancing is a standard feature! My sister is a drive-in movie buff, and so she and her husband love to go to the Blue Fox Drive-In up on Oak Harbor, one of five still running in our state.

Mahoning Drive-in, Leighton Pennsylvania

Sadly, now even drive-ins will need to close for a while in keeping with Washington State’s newly issued Stay Home, Stay Healthy order, but never fear: we have the solution! Kanopy, available with your Seattle Public Library card, has everything you need for a classic Drive In movie night at home  – including some wonderfully schlocky classic drive-in movie fare. First of all, learn about the history of drive-ins and their revival with a pair of documentaries:

• At the Drive-In: Saving the Mahoning Drive-In Theater. Unable to purchase a $50,000 digital projector, a group of quirky film fanatics in rural Pennsylvania fight to keep a dying drive-in theater alive by screening only vintage 35mm film prints and working entirely for free. An award-winning underdog story.
• Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-In Movie. A product of post World War II optimism, the drive-in movie theater emerged as the perfect blend of entertainment and car culture. In light of the recent resurgence of drive-in theaters, this informative documentary studies the factors that affected the drive-in’s dramatic rise, decline and rebirth.

Then check out Kanopy’s other offerings to create your own double feature. In amongst a wealth of classic art house films and award-winning international cinema, lurk some truly forgettable yet indelible B-movies, redolent of the heyday of drive-in cinema. Note: none of these are family films. I’m talking about movies such as…

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It’s Horror Season

As the weather turns chill and the darkness creeps earlier and earlier, it’s time to stay inside with a scary read. From a family jumping through alarming hoops to get an inheritance, to two variations on the creepy haunted house, monsters lurking at the window, and much more, there’s something to spook everyone.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
In 1860s England, Elsie, pregnant and recently widowed, travels to the crumbling country estate of her husband’s family. Kept company by only a few servants and her husband’s cousin, Elsie discovers a realistic life-size wooden figure in the attic garret. As the figure and others like it begin popping up around the house, seemingly moving of their own free will, violent deaths begin to occur. Is Elsie going crazy? Or is something more sinister at play?

Longer nights: Stranger tales

You can feel it in the air, can’t you: Autumn is just around  the corner, and here at the library that means gathering around to hear some spooky stories. Once again this Fall, we’ll be presenting our ‘Ales from the Crypt spooky story time in bars around town (visit the Booktoberfest page soon for details, or mark your calendar now for one of these dates: Tuesday Oct 22, 8 p.m. – Palace Art Bar, Georgetown; Sunday, Oct 27, 8 p.m. – Tippe & Drague Alehouse, Beacon Hill; Wednesday, Oct 30, 8 p.m. – Floating Bridge Brewing, University District. We will also have a pair of spooky readings as part of this year’s LitCrawl.

For those who prefer to get scared in broad daylight, don’t miss our regular lunch hour Thrilling Tales program as we shift into the spooky season of the year:

Monday, September 9, noon: The Painted Smile, by William Kent Krueger. Ten-year-old Oliver believes he’s Sherlock Holmes, and he isn’t the only one: just ask Professor Moriarty. Krueger’s homage to Arthur Conan Doyle is full of fun surprises.

The best of genre reading in 2018

Coordinated by the American Library Association, each year a group of librarians from across the country form The Reading List Council with the goal to identify the year’s best books across eight genres. Here are the 2019 winners (for books published in 2018) in Adrenaline, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, and Women’s Fiction, plus the short list of runners up in each category. Find new titles in the genre you love, or branch out and find something new to try. You can also find this full list in our library catalog.

Adrenaline

Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman
Managing CIA safe houses in 1979 West Berlin, Helen overhears a secret conversation that sends her on the run. Thirty-five years later, a tragedy leads Helen’s daughter to dig into her mother’s secret past, unaware that her mother’s old enemies are still watching.