May Staff Picks

Sarah says:

“Every­thing in nature is cycli­cal. Plants and ani­mals go through sea­sons of growth and abun­dance, and sea­sons of rest and renew­al. But if you’re any­thing like me, it can be hard to give your­self per­mis­sion to do the same. When life knocks us down, as it inevitably will, maybe the best thing we can do is slow down and retreat, nur­ture our­selves, and tend to the new growth that is hap­pen­ing with­in us. Accept­ing the win­ters of our own lives (no mat­ter what time of year they occur) means wel­com­ing and embrac­ing them, with their dark­ness and slow­er pace, know­ing that they won’t last for­ev­er, but that they will come again. So learn­ing how to sur­vive them, one day at a time, will leave us bet­ter equipped for the next one. I actu­al­ly found this to be a sooth­ing, com­fort­ing read, and it might be a good choice for #16 (a cozy book) in our 100 Years 100 Books Read­ing Chal­lenge.”

Ted says:

“Per­haps most wide­ly (un)known as the inspi­ra­tion for Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalk­er, this Sovi­et-era sci­ence fic­tion nov­el paints a por­trait of an Earth that, for two short days, served as a stopover point for extrater­res­tri­als – aliens that, in the time-hon­ored tra­di­tion of impa­tient and incon­sid­er­ate trav­ellers the uni­verse over, have left their garbage lit­tered across their land­ing spots. Their trash, our trea­sures: A black mar­ket has arisen in the after­math of their depar­ture, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty-espy­ing group of scav­engers have built a per­ilous liv­ing on res­cu­ing these mys­te­ri­ous and some­times pow­er­ful objects from what are now very dan­ger­ous places, pop­u­lat­ed by oth­er­world­ly men­aces. Unceas­ing­ly weird and yet strange­ly ground­ed in the mov­ing and all-too-human ​“it’s a liv­ing” men­tal­i­ty of its des­per­ate char­ac­ters, the world and char­ac­ters cre­at­ed by the Broth­ers Stru­gatsky kept me spell­bound from the first page to the last.” 

Lib­by says:

“If the phras­es ​“cop­per boom” or ​“oy with the poo­dles already,” or ​“he was my Dean first” mean any­thing to you, pick up this book today. From an in-depth his­to­ry of Lore­lai Gilmore’s coats to the unbreak­able yet del­i­cate bonds of moth­ers, grand­moth­ers, and daugh­ters, your Gilmore itch­es will be scratched to per­fec­tion. San­je­na Sathi­an, author of the ter­rif­ic nov­el Gold Dig­gers, has a par­tic­u­lar­ly love­ly and lay­ered essay about the inner life of teen immi­grants, while food writer Michael Ruhlman talks about his rela­tion­ship with Chris Eige­man (Dig­ger, to Gilmore Girls fans) as a way to relate to his own fam­i­ly. Breeze through this in a love­ly week­end, and binge your favorite episodes the next!