Book Bingo: Read Out Loud

Join The Seattle Public Library and Seattle Arts & Lectures for our 2^nd annual Summer Book Bingo for adults! Follow us throughout the summer for reading suggestions based on each category.

It is no surprise to anyone around the library that I love to read out loud. They even let me do it in public, twice a month! My wife and I used to read big novels aloud together – All the King’s Men, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov – and we’ve just started on Stephen King’s Dark Tower books – though these are hardly titles I’d suggest to those working on their Book Bingo cards. Parents or grandparents already reading aloud to children get a freebie with this square, but for others this category may be among the most challenging. A century or more ago, people read aloud regularly, as Verlyn Klinkenborg writes:

Book Bingo: Collection of Short Stories

Join The Seattle Public Library and Seattle Arts & Lectures for our 2^nd annual Summer Book Bingo for adults! Follow us throughout the summer for reading suggestions based on each category.

I read a lot of fiction every year and every year I have a hard time fitting in a collection of short stories. I prefer long-form, or think I do, until I sit back and reflect on how in some cases short stories have impacted me more powerfully than many novels. Here are some personal examples of stories and short story collections that blew my mind and that I still think about in the hopes that you, like me, will break through your own defenses and excuses and find some gems of your own.

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.

Book Bingo: Short Stories II: Essays

    – Posted by Andrea

This summer The Seattle Public Library, in partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures, is excited to offer a summer reading program for adults called Summer Book Bingo! In order to help you along on your quest to complete your bingo sheet, we have pulled together some book suggestions based on each category. Follow this series throughout the summer!

Welcome to the nonfiction edition of the Summer Book Bingo category Collection of short stories – essays! Essay collections share the same versatility as short story collections: you can sit down and read several in a row, or read a single essay and go do something else without worrying about remembering the thread of facts. The topics, of course, range from personal essays, to humor, to factual domains like science or history. Here are just a few to get you started:

Book Bingo: A Book You Own, but Have Never Read

 – Posted by Sarah W.

This summer The Seattle Public Library, in partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures, is excited to offer a summer reading program for adults called Summer Book Bingo! In order to help you along on your quest to complete your bingo sheet, we have pulled together some book suggestions based on each category. Follow this series throughout the summer!

Why is it that so many books sit gathering dust on my shelf? Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew – a buying frenzy at the local bookstore leaves me with more volumes on my nightstand than I can manage in that hour or so before sleep. But there are usually other factors at play. Maybe there is an author I like, but the book I bought is a departure from what they usually write (and what I usually read).