Vol. I · Tumwater, Washington
Edited by Crystal the Librarian
Film, literature, archives, and book reviews — notes from the stacks, with every claim pointed back to its source.
Currently chasing: the footnote nobody bothered to check
CT 275 · The Editor
Before I was a librarian, I was a student of film and literature — the kind who rewinds a scene four times and reads the footnotes first. That training in close reading and criticism still runs everything I do: how I research, how I present, and how I review a book.
By day, I'm Head of Collections at the Washington State Library — special collections, historic newspapers, maps, and government publications. Which is a long way of saying: if a record exists, I have opinions about where it's hiding.
The Manicule Review is the part of me that doesn't fit on a business card.
Librarian, critic, speaker. — Tumwater, Wash. : verified primary sources, est. way back.
Includes lectures, book reviews, marginalia, and an unreasonable fondness for microfilm.
Z 716.4 · Lectures & Programs
For libraries, historical societies, and genealogy groups. Every talk is built on primary sources — and at least one story I couldn't believe either.
State Publications
The most underused records in genealogy were filed by clerks, not kept by families. Where state publications hide, what they contain, and how to make them talk.
Request this talkMigration & Family History
The trails, rails, and waterways that carried families west — and the records each one left behind. A long view of how Washington's families got here.
Request this talkHistoric Newspapers
Birth notices, gossip columns, shipping lists, and small-town scandal: the family history hiding in newsprint, and the strategies that surface it.
Request this talkWashington State History
Names and dates are a skeleton. State history is the flesh: what your ancestors' town, work, and times can tell you about the lives between the records.
Request this talkBooking for in-person and virtual programs · Slides include sources, always.
Z 1035 · Books — Reviews
Reviews and the running ledger of what I'm reading — fiction, criticism, advance copies, and audiobooks. Rated in manicules, naturally: five hands means drop everything.
Two or three sentences of review live here — the kind that tells you whether a book earns its ending, not just whether it has one.
An advance copy worth shouting about — with a note on craft, structure, or the one scene that justified the whole book.
A few words on narration, pacing, and whether the reader's voice earned the author's sentences.
CD 950 · Recent Accessions
Curiosities from my own research — pulled from collections, microfilm, and century-old maps. Updated whenever something makes me say "wait, what?" out loud in a quiet room.
A sentence or two on the discovery — what you were looking for, what you found instead, and why it stopped you cold.
The document, the map, or the clipping — and the small mystery it opened up.
Where it was hiding, how long it had been there, and what it changed.
PN 145 · Field Notes
Essays on film, fiction, archives, and research culture — the place where the close-reading training and the deep-storage day job finally meet. Longer dives and review round-ups live on my newsletter.
Read the newsletter