“AH! FASHION. A nuthouse? A refuge? Or maybe both. Yes, an asylum in both senses of the word. A place where unemployable crazy people are always welcome.” So begins Simon Doonan’s book The Asylum, with most of the ensuing 268 pages devoted to making his case that hardcore fashionistas and the mentally ill have…
I’ve been following Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess for nearly 10 years, after stumbling across a copy of her first book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, at Porter Square Books one day. As soon as I finished reading it (which, fortunately, was at home, because people on the T get very nervous seeing a middle-aged…
When it’s cold outside, or you can’t leave the house due to a raging pandemic, or you’re just plain bored, looking through a cookbook for just the right recipe and getting to work in the kitchen or planning a future meal can be just the ticket–after all, you can only knit so many shawls, show…
It’s a little over a year since the pandemic began and in spite of lower case numbers and available vaccines, it’s still far from over. It’s so easy to feel our lives are on hold. But they aren’t. It’s just this is what are our lives are right now: staying at home and doing very…
It’s the time of year for The New York Times and other media to publish their lists of the best books of 2020. My list is a little different. I read a lot of books this year, but almost none of them were published in 2020. So here a list of the best books I…
As the days get shorter and the number of COVID cases rises, a lot of us are really tired of staying in our homes and walking the same neighborhood streets. Unfortunately, health experts agree that traveling is a really bad idea right now. However, libraries offer a way to travel that’s undeniably safer and cheaper…
Did you know that the Library has a few hundred zines? They range from comic books, to small treatises on birds or movies, to poetry chapbooks, to pamphlets on how to intervene when a stranger is being abusive to another stranger. Most of these items are hand-made, self-published, and printed in very limited numbers. Since…
It may seem that the news is all bad—COVID-19, hurricanes, forest fires–but by no means should we give up. Climate Preparedness Week is coming September 24-30, and the Massachusetts Library System has partnered with CREW (Communities Responding to Extreme Weather) to host free virtual programs on the intersections of climate resilience and social and racial justice. In keeping…
The pandemic has left many of us depressed, lonely or a little traumatized. To cope with the anxiety and the loss of most of their normal activities, many people are taking comfort in books. They’ve intuitively stumbled upon what’s called bibliotherapy: reading to promote mental health. In that spirit, we at SPL decided to put together…
The theme of this year’s ArtBeat (July 10-18) is chance, featuring virtual performances and real life art installations exploring the unexpected and unplanned. In honor of the festival—and the uncertain times we’re living in—we at SPL decided to recommend some books that engage with the risky and unpredictable. Our first stop is New Orleans in the early…
