Fall Newsletter

As we prepare to kick off the Fall 2025 semester, here is the latest edition of the Library Newsletter. Have a great weekend, and see you on Monday!

 

Friday Reads: The Baseball 100

Happy Friday! My husband tells me (Kelly) that the Pirates have probably been "mathematically eliminated from the playoffs until 2029," but Library Director Adam Pellman has happier baseball topics to discuss today as he tells us about The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski. 

 

I used to read a lot of sports history books as a kid, especially books about baseball. I had a massive baseball encyclopedia that I pored over endlessly, and I even used it to teach myself how to keep score (although I've forgotten after so many years). This book has rekindled my interest in baseball's long and storied history. Posnanski selected those players he feels are the 100 greatest ever, and has devoted a chapter to each of them. This is no easy task, for sure, but Posnanski has managed it in dazzling fashion.

He is a tremendous writer. I appreciate the attention he gives to players from the Negro Leagues, and even to international players like the famous Japanese slugger Sadaharu Oh. What makes this book truly great, though, is the way he goes beyond the statistics and standard biography to delve into the personalities, anecdotes, legends, and sometimes intangible qualities that have made these players such enduring figures in the sport's history. For example, there's the legend about famously swift-footed Negro Leagues player Cool Papa Bell, about whom it was said that he was "so fast that he could hit a line drive up the middle and beat the ball to second base." Or the way Posnanski frames his chapter on Ty Cobb by writing that Cobb "works best as an extreme. That is to say, he seems of little use to us if he wasn't the BIGGEST RACIST IN BASEBALL HISTORY or THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD MAN EVER TO WEAR BASEBALL SPIKES." Or the way he celebrates Stan Musial as not just one of the greatest hitters of all time, but also as a profoundly good man who was devoted to making people happy. I also love that Posnanski included childhood favorites of mine like Larry Walker and Mike Mussina. It's a long book (well over 800 pages), and I've enjoyed reading it so much that I've paced myself in order to make it last as long as possible. I'll be genuinely sad when I've finished it.

Friday Reads: Back to Blood

Back to Friday Reads and Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe! Library Director Adam Pellman tells us about his current summer read. 

 

 

Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities is considered by many to be the quintessential American novel of the 1980s, a big, sprawling NYC-set satire that sets its sights on the decade's materialism and excess, not to mention that city's racial and ethnic tensions. He tried to write another decade-defining novel in the 1990s with A Man in Full, another big, sprawling story about the foibles of a wealthy man. I thought both of those books were great, so I've decided belatedly to tackle Wolfe's novel of the 2010s, Back to Blood. It has many of the same hallmarks from his earlier novels (the satirical tone, the big cast of broadly-written characters, the thematic preoccupations with class, power, money, race, politics, and the press), but in this case, he's swapped Bonfire's NYC melting pot for the sun-baked, multicultural metropolis of Miami, Florida.

While the main character of Back to Blood is Cuban American Miami police officer Nestor Camacho, who ends up in hot water with both the Cuban and African American communities after two high-profile incidents on the job, Wolfe devotes plenty of attention to the many other characters who populate his story: WASP journalists; Cuban politicians; cops; Russian oligarchs; a Haitian college professor and his two children; and a fame-hungry psychiatrist and his Latina nurse, who also happens to be Nestor's ex-girlfriend. So far, it's highly entertaining, even if it doesn't quite reach the same heights as Bonfire.

"Work With Me" Pomodoro Sessions

 

New this summer, the library will be hosting several "Work With Me" Pomodoro-style Zoom sessions to help us all get things done! All SHU faculty, staff, and students are welcome. 

Block off the time on your calendar and bring a to-do list or a project that needs some focused work. We'll combine the proven Pomodoro technique with positive peer pressure to help us all reach our summer goals. Full details and the scheduled dates (subject to change) are available here.

Summer 2025 Newsletter

 The Library newsletter for Summer 2025 is live now!

 

Summer Hours

 

We made it to summer!

Regular summer hours for 2025:

 Monday - Friday: 8:00 a.m. - 4:50 p.m.

Saturday & Sunday: CLOSED 

Exception dates (subject to change; please see the library's homepage for the most current list):

May 20                                       8:00am - 1:00pm

May 23                                       CLOSED

May 26                                       CLOSED

June 19                                      CLOSED

July 4                                         CLOSED

August 18                                  CLOSED

August 19                                  CLOSED

Finals Week Hours

 

It's finals week!

We're open:

8:00-9:50 Monday
8:00-7:50 Tuesday-Thursday as our student aides wrap up their semesters and head home
8:00-4:50 Friday
CLOSED Sat & Sun for Commencement

NOTE: This is the Library rooms, NOT the Learning Commons.

Good luck to all! We're cheering for you!