Staff Picks
Check the blog every Wednesday for updates on what our staff is reading and watching and recommendations for our new and all-time favorite books and movies. What is your favorite book or movie? Post your answer in the comments section below. To see all previous Staff Picks posts, simply type "Staff Picks" in the search box at the top left of this blog and click the "search blog" button.

Holes by Louis Sachar - recommended by Cheryl
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself. -library catalog.

The Shield of Three Lions by Pamela Kaufman - recommended by Thea
Shield of Three Lions unfurls amidst the plagues, poxes, sackings, banquets, leeches, jousts, and processions of Medieval England–and tells the fresh, at times hilarious tale of an unflappable heroine caught in a web of politics, sex, and psychology. - Random House Book Guide.

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo - recommended by Stephanie
A story of three families in a small upstate New York town who's lives are interwoven to create a beautiful narrative of the joys and tragedies of life. It captures the unanticipated events in childhood that forever define one's adulthood. You will feel a strong bond with these families and their town.

MOVIE WATCH: The Waitress written and directed by Adrienne Shelly - recommended by Megan

Jenna is unhappily married. She squirrels away money and is hoping to win a pie-baking contest so, with the prize money, she'll have enough cash to leave her husband Earl. She finds herself pregnant and her plans are thrown awry. She bakes phenomenal pies at Joe's diner, listens to old Joe's wisdom, tolerates her sour boss Cal, is friends with her fellow waitresses, Dawn and Becky. She, also, finds a mutual attraction with the new doctor in town. Life with Earl becomes less tolerable as her pregnancy advances. Her way out of the marriage is less clear and her affair with the doctor is complicated by his marriage. - library catalog.