Our Staff

What book everyone should read: The Scholomance Series. Magic School where you only learn spells from a book the school gives you, and if you don't know the language the book is written in... well you better start studying ancient Mesopotamian.

Favorite time and place to read: On the beach, under a sun umbrella and an ice cold drink.

Favorite outdoors activity: Hiking and bird-watching.

Fun Fact: I used to study planets forming around other stars!

What book everyone should read: Água Viva by Clarice Lispector, will change your view of literary form with its creative, musical prose by exploring consciousness and the nature of all things.

Favorite time and place to read: Nighttime to relax and outside under a tree.

Favorite outdoors activity: Hiking the great sand dunes.

Fun Fact: Favorite animal is the manatee

What book everyone should read: The Giving Tree, a few times when you’re younger, and a few hundred more times once you understand it. Also, Tiny, Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. This is a collection of essays from the advice column “Dear Sugar,” with questions submitted from readers, and answers written by Cheryl Strayed. The questions showcase the beauty, destruction, and complexity, and the answers are fueled with punch-you-in-the-gut honesty and wisdom.

Favorite time and place to read: On the beach at sunrise or late at night in a quiet house when everyone has been asleep for hours.

Favorite outdoors activity: Hiking, biking, golfing—any activity that challenges, humbles, then rewards, and keeps me coming back for those 3 reasons.Biking

Fun Fact: Aspiring yoga instructor

What book everyone should read: Justice by Michael Sandel.  This book is based on his philosophy class at Harvard.  Over 15000 students have taken the class.  Now the read the book.  Sandel explains how maximizing welfare for the society is often at conflict with the best of the individual.

Favorite time and place to read: Every morning, around  6:30 and sit on the patio with a coffee before I take a lap around Cheeseman Park with my dog Cooper

Favorite outdoors activity: Discovering a new mountain hike with Cooper.

Fun Fact:

What book everyone should read: American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman constructs a unique pantheon of an American gods like banking or Hollywood. It follows Shadow, an ex-con dragged into a war between the old gods and the new.

Favorite time and place to read: In a cozy chair, outside in the sun, with a mug of a hot drink.

Favorite outdoors activity: Hiking and scrambling up random rocks.

Fun Fact: Modeled for a hoverboard company.

What book everyone should read: Fishbowl by Bradley Somer. This is a humorous and heartwarming story told from the perspective of a goldfish named Ian. He escapes from his bowl on cleaning day when he is placed on the balcony of his apartment building. As he plummets 27 floors to the ground, he peers in the windows of all the eccentric residents of the building and tells the stories of their interconnecting lives. It is touching funny, poignant and timelessly relevant about what connects us and makes us human - from the perspective of a goldfish, no less!

Favorite time and place to read: On a porch swing in Northside Denver in the early morning with hot coffee or late afternoon with a cold drink throughout all the seasons.

Favorite outdoors activity: Hiking with the dog in the summer and skiing in the winter

Fun Fact: Owned an independent bookstore in the middle of Kansas called Bluebird Books and Cafe. It was sadly a victim of the Covid pandemic, like many small businesses and independent bookstores.

What book everyone should read: Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence by Judith Butler. Though it opens with an essay about 9/11, this essay collection is just as salient now as when it was first published in 2004, if not more so. Butler has an incredibly elucidating way of posing questions about US foreign policy—in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine—in existential and humanitarian terms. Rather than defaulting to violence, what if we recognized the humanity of those who live outside our country’s border? Butler asks us to do this, to consider who qualifies as “human” in the news, whose lives are grievable, whose vulnerability matters.

Favorite time and place to read: In the sweet spot after dinner and before bed. Maybe in bed, maybe in an armchair.

Favorite outdoors activity: Sport/multi-pitch climbing on any of Colorado's many rock types (esp. technical climbing on sandstone)

Fun Fact: Once played drums in a band that opened for Bowling for Soup.

What book everyone should read: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. This book makes you question conformity and if a pleasure-driven life is really worth it.

Favorite time and place to read: My favorite place to read is in the morning, cozied up with a warm cup of coffee and soaking up the sunshine.

Favorite outdoors activity: Hiking in the mountains, hopefully with an alpine lake along the way.

Fun Fact: I play violin for the Black Rock Philharmonic that performs at Burning Man every year!