Happy Birthday, Fёdor Mihajlovič Dosto’evskij!

Today is the birthday of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881). If Dostoevsky’s big books have been on your “classics-to-read” back burner for awhile, make today the day you finally pick one up.
Though I started reading Dostoevsky with Crime and Punishment, you might prefer reading The Idiot or Notes from Underground first. Or, maybe you’ll want to start with the [...]

Top 10 Forgotten Classic Horror Writers

Since it’s Halloween weekend, what better way to head off into the sunset, equipped with stakes, ouija board, silver bullets, garlic, etc., than a list of top ten favorite classic horror writers?
But not just any list.  Most of us know those: Stoker and Shelley and Poe and Lovecraft, etc. etc.  No, how about a top ten list of forgotten, [...]

Harrowing Halloween Horror

We’ve recently added some great new books to our horror collection, just in time for Halloween!  Check them out:
Frostbite: A Werewolf Tale by David Wellington – Since vampires are currently everyone’s favorite creature of the night (thanks a lot, Stephenie Meyer), we don’t see many books about werewolves these days. Fortunately, Frostbite fills in the gaps pretty well [...]

Praising Melancholy With Depressing Books

I recently stumbled upon a new book by Eric G. Wilson called Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy and thought, “Ok, here’s a guy who gets it.” Wilson’s treatise argues that some folks are simply born a little sadder than others, and that there’s nothing wrong with that.
This is a refreshing take on the matter for us melancholy types, who [...]

Nick Cave: Poet, Novelist, Musician, Birthday Boy

Today is the birthday of one of Australia’s premier exports, Nick Cave. Cave has made his mark in many arenas: music, novels, poetry, and film, and probably a few more. His work with his band, The Bad Seeds, changed the landscape of literate rock. Their appearance in one of my favorite films of all times, [...]

My First Beach Reads

I usually prefer to vacation in New England in the dead of winter, but recently I decided to give the beach a try, and even did what summer-loving folks call “beach reading,” although most of it was done on a screened-in porch, because, thankfully, it rained much of the time I was there. Here are some books [...]

What I didn’t read.

I just recently signed up for a class that has a required text. Unfortunately, that means I had to return a number of library books unread – gasp! Yes, it pains me.  So I’m going to tell you what they were so that at least one of us will get to read them.  Imagine me [...]

How do you say “pass the popcorn” in Kurdish?

Among the many many wonders of the Film & Audio Department is our foreign language film collection. What started out a decade ago as four shelves of French, German, and Italian VHS tapes has expanded to twenty-nine shelves of VHS tapes and DVDs in fifty-nine languages.
So yes, we do have those Japanese samurai classics. And if you’re [...]

Scary Summer Reading

Vampires and post-apocalyptic fiction are figuring heavily in my reading list lately.  I’ve been revisiting some of the classics, as well as exploring some of the newer books in the genre, like:

Dracula, by Bram Stoker: I only recently got around to reading the classic of all vampire novels, and was delighted to find that it’s [...]

Cold Thoughts on a Hot Day

Editor’s Note:  Thank you for reading along this week as the Eleventh Stack team highlighted the many different ways you can help the Carnegie Library during these challenging times, and the many reasons you might want to. 
We close our week of library advocacy with a guest post from Kathie, whose book picks and info [...]