Linda-Marie Barrett / Executive Director:
Reading: The Summer We Ran by Audrey Ingram. This Southern Book Prize finalist is a captivating novel set in two time periods that deals with tragedy, secrets, love, and ambition. I’m enjoying the southern setting, political intrigues, and hinted-at secrets yet to be revealed.
Listening: The Relaxing Guitar station on Pandora is my speed these days. Comforting music for the grey days.
Watching: If it’s not Hallmark holiday movies, it’s classic holiday movies, with the occasional A Man on the Inside episode thrown in. Looking forward to the newest season of All Creatures Great and Small in January.

Nicki Leone / Communications:
Reading: The Nature of Oaks by Douglas Tallamy. A couple of different novels I think might be good to suggest to book club, the most promising of which are You Exist Too Much by Zania Arafat, and Duet for One by Martha Ann Toll. Also, cookie recipes! Pfeffernusse, date pinwheels, pecan butter balls, and pizzelle.
Listening: The wind in the trees. Literally. When I started walking the dog through the woods first thing in the morning, I thought, I could listen to audio books while we walk. But I can't make myself do it. The woods are just too beautiful to ignore.
Watching: Half an episode of the Ken Burns American Revolution series every night. I love all the excerpts from letters of people caught up in the war -- common soldiers, wives, loyalist resisters, patriot militia "men" that were really only boys. I like the way the series always often shows things at eye level, as if you the viewer are one of the solidiers marching in the line, or one of the women tending wounded men in your parlor.

SP Rankin / Website Administrator:
Reading: Is unfortunately taking a back seat as we approach the launch date of the new SIBA website. But that has not stopped me from adding things to my list, like Olivia Meehan's Slow Looking: The Art of Nature and Kathleen B. Casey's The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America.
Listening: I'm a firm believer that the best holiday music should make you cry, and so I'm welcoming the season of shadows and light with Tracy Thorn's "Joy" from her 2012 album Tinsel and Lights. "It's because of the dark; we see the beauty in the spark. That's why, that's why the carols make you cry."
Watching: Ken Burn's stunning, sweeping The American Revolution. Filled with voices (both historic and present-day) that are usually unheard in the telling of this story, it restores the full complexity of our beginnings as a nation. And none too soon, in this age of rejecting complexity and truth for simplistic and dangerous myths.

Andrea Richardson / Sales:
Reading: I just finished the most fun Poe-themed Middle Grade mystery - Ellen Poe and the Forgotten Lore by Diana Peterfreund. It's a great mystery set in Baltimore with a ton of Edgar Allan Poe lore.
Listening: According to my Spotify Wrapped, a lot of the Handsome podcast this year. That tracks!
Watching: Minx, a fun and bawdy short-lived show about a women's magazine in the 70's. I'm bummed there were only two seasons!