Dear Friends,
I had been chatting with the brilliant Skidompha staff today about what they are reading and watching these days, and of course the list was varied eclectic. A brief sample:
Terry Hapach has been watching PBS’s Finding Your Roots. This show works with the person chosen, often a famous artist or personality, in this case, noted singer and musician Alanis Morissette, and researches their genealogy.
Hannah Doktor has been loving a Netflix show called The Upshaws, a sitcom with Kim Fields and comedians Wanda Sykes and Mike Epps that follows a chaotic family in Indiana. She also just finished reading Crafting for Sinners, a horror novel that takes place in the fictional equivalent of a Hobby Lobby.
Becky Cooper has been watching PBS recently and hours 1 and 2 of Antiques Roadshow: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. The final episode will air March 23. Apparently, this is the Antiques Roadshow’s first time in Maine ever!
Chloe Deblois just read Orbital, by Samantha Harvey. Chloe says that for such a relatively slim novel, it is so rich. It follows a day in the lives of six astronauts in orbit above Earth. Harvey’s writing is luminous, and her descriptions of our planet from above in this uncanny limbo are both beautiful and haunting. It was a great reminder of how powerfully fiction can transport you, even to a place most of us are likely to never visit.
Meghan Hawkes says she has been reading a few different things recently. One is the Weird Walk book. Weird Walk is an anonymously written zine and website of hikes around the strange and supposedly mystical sites of the British Isles — part travel guide, part history, part folklore — and the book is a fun compilation. To pair nicely with it, she has also been enjoying some of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird anthologies, which publish Gothic and horror stories from the 19th through mid-20th centuries that have been stored in the Library’s collection. They’re a fun window into the ways our approach to those genres has shifted (and not) over the modern era.
Finally, I have been reading WE ARE DEFINITELY HUMAN, by X. Fang. This is a children’s picture that has been passed around our desks with the message “You Must Read This!” And I can’t argue with that. X. Fang has written a cute and brilliantly funny book about welcoming and kindness that I thoroughly recommend. No hyperbole, but children’s books often offer some of the best literature.
Unfortunately Gab Smith was not around at the time this was wrote and I was unable to get her picks. I will definitely talk to her tomorrow and see what she has been up to.
Be well,
Matthew
Matthew Graff
Executive Director
Skidompha Public Library