Walking Dead (Walker Papers, Book 4) By C.E. Murphy.
Luna, 2009. 376p.

Recommendation submitted by:
Jill Merritt, Library Associate, Washington State Library Branch Services, Tumwater, WA.

Joanne Walker is coming to terms with her life as a shaman and newly minted police detective in Seattle.  However, the calm is broken by the arrival of unexpected ghosts at a Halloween party full of police.  Soon Joanne is dealing with zombies and a magic caldron that has a long history of death. Crisscrossing Seattle, Joanne follows the dark trail left by the cauldron, picking up a few hitchhiking ghosts along the way, including one very dear to the her partner’s heart.

Readers familiar with the series will enjoy the return of previous characters helping and in some cases hindering Joanne’s fight to save Seattle from the undead. The writing and subject matter leans toward more adult themes, but might appeal to older teens. Walking Dead is one installment in the Walker Paper series by C.E. Murphy that answers a few readers questions about the shaman, but leaves more unanswered.  Interested readers will eagerly look for the next story of Joanne Walker.

ISBN-13: 978-0373803019.

Available as an eBook
Title contains adult themes.

Trask. By Don Berry.
Oregon State University Press, 2004. 348 p.
(Copyright 1960 by Don Berry and first published by Viking Press)

Recommendation submitted by:
Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager, Washington State Library, Tumwater, WA.

Mountain man Elbridge Trask, living in the Clatsop area in the 1840’s, has a hunger for even wilder, less settled areas. He plans a trip down the coast to the area inhabited by unfriendly natives, the “Killamooks” as Tillamook, Oregon, was typically spelled in those early years.

But the real story is Trask’s inner life, compellingly imagined by author Don Berry. Trask barely knows his own mind at times, is unsure of what he wants, at least on a conscious level, but his heart leads him inexorably onward towards his fate. While at times beset by doubts and inner turmoil, he never hesitates when making the most crucial decisions, and at times, speaks almost without thinking, yet expressing his deepest desires.

Also significant is Trask’s relationship with his partners in travel, two Clatsop Indians, one young and untested and the other, Charley Kehwa, is a tamanawis man, one who has visions or dreams of a supernatural nature. Trask is too hard-headed to believe in such things, but is affected by them all the same.

Berry followed Trask with two more novels, Moontrap and To Build a Ship.  These three tales “form a loose trilogy that tells the story of [Oregon’s] origins better than any history book”, according to the book’s introduction.  This first volume is a tour-de-force and a powerful, impressive narrative.

ISBN: 0-87071-023-0

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 BERRY 2004
Also available as a talking book on cassette.
Not available as an eBook or as a Braille edition.

D.B.: A Novel. By Elwood Reid.  New York : Doubleday, 2004.  356 p.

Recommendation submitted by:
Sean Lanksbury, NW and Special Collections Librarian, Washington State Library.

If you were alive in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970’s, doubtlessly you recall the high altitude heist of D.B. Cooper.  I lived near Camas, Washington, supposed drop point of our region’s most notorious skyjacker.  My friends and I playacted endless what-if scenarios involving Cooper that often included a Sasquatch (because what northwest kid wouldn’t add a bigfoot?) for good measure  in the forests of Southwest Washington for hours on end.

So what if “Dan Cooper” actually made off with the $150,000 that didn’t wash up on the shore of the Columbia River? D.B., by Elwood Reid, imagines the back-story and the aftermath of Cooper’s heist, from Cooper’s perspective, as a soft-boiled satire for the changing definition of gender and responsibility in the late twentieth century.  The plot follows the story from Cooper’s perspective as he plans the heist and deals with the consequences and costs of his crime and exile.  A parallel plot follows a recently retired Federal Bureau of Investigation investigator – originally assigned to the case – who now reflects on his career and evaluates his life and relationships as he heads into uncharted personal realms.

Author Reid’s tight, readable style makes for a clever piece of speculative fiction that mixes dark comedy with unsentimental reflection on modern masculinity.

ISBN-13: 978-0385497381

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 REID 2004.
Not available as an eBook, talking book, or as a Braille edition.
Title contains adult themes.

From the desk of Sean Lanksbury. PNW & Special Collections Librarian

One of the many goals that the State Library works towards is exciting Washingtonians about reading books.  Our staff gets especially excited about books that represent our state and the larger Pacific Northwest region.  We all have our favorite reads: fiction lovers get very passionate about their preferred genres and stylistic sub-genres,  non-fiction fans range from those who enjoy a wide range of popular topics to others who focus in one subject, gathering as many details as they can find. Some people just love a good read, regardless of where it falls in terms of content.

Librarians and library staff love to share their thoughts on books, and past Washington State Librarians have put out regular book recommendations over the years. We thought it might be time to play around with this idea a bit and inject some variety, so we are inviting some other enthusiastic readers to join in on the action. Next week the state library will begin regular postings of recommendations from library staff. These recommendations will feature compelling reads in fiction and non-fiction, both recent and classic titles, which feature the Pacific Northwest. These posts will contain links for locating a copy nearest you, and will provide information on availability as an electronic resource or title for visually impaired. In the next few weeks you can see these posts as part of an upgraded library blog that will be located at https://blogs.sos.wa.gov/library/ or as a standalone feature within the blog at https://blogs.sos.wa.gov/library/wareads.aspx

We will also feature other events where Washington State Library participates in literacy and reader’s advisory, such as Letters About Literature and the National Book Festival.

For the time being you may see earlier Washington Reads and other bibliographies produced by the Washington State Library at http://www.sos.wa.gov/library/bibliographies.aspx

From the desk of Sean Lanksbury. PNW & Special Collections Librarian

Here at the State Library our staff and users still heavily rely on this crazy little technology called “microfilm.”  It is what people used for high-density information storage before the age of computers, and digitizing it all is still going to take some time.  The library keeps all of the Washington Newspapers on microfilm and many other interesting documents, such as the Territorial Newspapers Card Index [see catalog record online], which is shown above, or even more enticing, the Special report No. 14 of Project Blue Book: Analysis of Reports of Unidentified Aerial Objects, 1955 [see catalog record online].

One of the best things about microfilm is that if there are long-term power outages, you can always hold them to the light and pull out a magnifying glass to read the data.  Try to do that, memory stick!  One of the downsides is that they are so well loved they begin to wear out, and we occasionally need to have new film made from the masters.  Just look at the above example to see how bad they can get. The old film stock starts to yellow, the image gets scratchy from hours of running through high speed readers, and…is that tape holding the two ends together?  Yikes!

Luckily, the fine folks at the State Archives keep master copies of the state’s newspapers on microfilm and Northwest Collection on microfilm, and our crackerjack acquisitions team can order new ones from them as the budget allows, ensuring that Washington State researchers will continue to have access to these fine resources for decades to come.  You can also purchase copies of microfilm held by the Washington State Library.  Find out more by clicking here.

From the desk of Sean Lanksbury. PNW & Special Collections Librarian

Here is a new addition to the Washington State Library’s Special Collections: Cabinet card showing portraits of H.L. Yesler, Bailey Gatzert and M.R. Maddocks.

Henry Leiter Yesler (b. 1810, Washington County, MD; d. 12/16/1892, Seattle, WA) established the Seattle settlement’s first steam-powered sawmill in 1852 and built the city’s first public water utility.  He bought and sold a large portion of early Seattle real estate, making himself Seattle’s first millionaire in the process.

Bailey Gatzert (b. 1829, Hesse Darmstadt, Germany; d. 04/19/1893) was a partner and general manager of one of Seattle’s earliest hardware and general mercantile stores, Schwabacher Brothers and Company. He also co-founded Seattle’s first synagogue, Ohaveth Shalom, which was dedicated on September 18, 1892.  Ohaveth Shalom was the second synagogue in the State of Washington, the Temple Emanu-El in Spokane being the first. It was dedicated four days earlier.

Moses Redout Maddocks (b. 11/13/1833, Bucksport, ME; d. unknown) was an owner and builder of the Occidental Hotel at Occidental and Yesler in Pioneer Square and later the proprietor of a local drugstore.  He also made his wealth in real estate, much of it near the White River where he spent his summers and ran a dairy. (Bagley, History of Seattle, p.889)

All three of these gentlemen served as mayor of Seattle at some point in time: Maddocks (R) began the trend on June 5 and served until August 5 of 1873. Yesler (R) followed in July 13, 1874, succeeded by Gatzert (Ind.), who served as Seattle’s first – and to date, only – Jewish mayor, from 1875 to 1876.  Yesler was re-elected to the position on July 13, 1885, and served until July 12, 1886.  Gazert and Yesler were downtown neighbors in their respective mansions located on Third Avenue and James Street.

The “Beauty Unadorned” noted on this albumen print is likely referring to the fine vistas and beautiful architecture of Seattle and its environs, but perhaps these hirsute gentlemen were referring to their own handsome and rugged looks?  No matter; in the spirit of the season we can forgive a little vanity.

Also notable is an interesting and timely connection to Washington libraries. The first public library in Seattle opened April 8, 1891, as a reading room on the third floor of the Seattle Hotel on the Occidental Block, site of the first Occidental Hotel that Maddocks built in 1861.  The collection moved many times in the intervening years, but seven years later it found a “permanent” spot in the Yesler family mansion, staying there until it burned down in a fire during the early morning hours of Jan. 2, 1901.  That day was not such an auspicious start to a New Year for Seattle.  Following the fire, the library records, 2,000 volumes of the children’s titles and 5,000 titles that were circulating at the time were kept in Yesler’s old barn, which escaped cremation.  The library was eventually rebuilt with funds from magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.  Better to allow Seattle Public Library to chime in on this subject:

Four days (after the fire) came another shock. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer trumpeted its great scoop: Andrew Carnegie had agreed to donate $200,000 to build a new “fireproof” library in Seattle after city officials promised to buy a new library site and guaranteed an annual maintenance amount of $50,000 – such a lofty figure that the nation’s pre-eminent library philanthropist thought it was a mistake in the secret telegram from the distant Northwest. He was assured that $50,000 was “none too large” for Seattle’s needs. Carnegie responded with one of his largest library donations and his notation, “I like your pluck.”

-taken from Brief History of The Seattle Public Library, found online at the Seattle Public Library website.