The informal talk series Nerd Nite Ann Arbor hit its 100th-event milestone in July, but nobody threw a party for it.

“We talked about whether we wanted to celebrate it or not, and we decided every Nerd Nite is a neat Nerd Nite,” said Ann Arbor District Library's Emily Murphy, who co-hosts the event with AADL colleague Jacob Gorski.

“And yes, we hit 100, but we’re gonna keep going. We acknowledged it when we were there and said, ‘Here we are—wow, 100 times,’ but I feel confident that we’re gonna just keep going, and people [will] keep coming to it.”

Murphy and Gorski are hosting the 103rd edition of Nerd Nite Ann Arbor on October 9. The two-hour event, held on the second Thursday of every month at LIVE, features three speakers giving informative talks in a bar setting for 15-20 minutes on topics of their choice.

Topics often cover science, technology, health, history, and pop culture. The October 9 event features speakers Kim Williams-Guillén on the bats of Wayne County, Chuwen (Cullen) Zhong on the impacts of loneliness and social isolation on people’s health, and Jim Ottaviani on identifying and tracking asteroids in our solar system.

Jay Platt thought he'd be an engineer. The boat lover moved to Ann Arbor in 1963 from Alexandria, Virginia, to study naval architecture at the University of Michigan.

But a different career called out to him after he visited a bookstore in New York City:

"I had always been interested in older things, for one thing, and books—I wouldn't say I was a collector, but I would make a point of getting an earlier edition," Platt told Elizabeth Smith and Amy Cantu in an episode of AADL Talks To that was published March 30, 2024. "Then in early, I think, '71, I believe it was, I was in New York City with a good friend of mine, and he was into book collecting. We visited some bookshops ... but one we went into and he asked for this book by—I forgot what the title was—but the book dealer went way up in, knew right where it was. I said, 'How did he know that? There are thousands of books here,' and now I know, because you know your stock. You have to, and that's what got me started."

Platt worked for a couple of bookstores in Ann Arbor before launching his own business here in 1975: West Side Book Shop at 113 West Liberty Street. He and his partner at the time held an opening party on September 21, 1975, at the store, which is located on the street level of the John Haarer Building, which was built in 1888.

Fifty years later, West Side Book Shop is still going strong inside the Haarer Building.

If you're an Ann Arbor District Library cardholder, you receive a weekly email newsletter listing news, upcoming events, and a slew of recommendations from the catalog. Those recs are also available at aadl.org/reviews, and we're always happy to make suggestions for books, audiobooks, streamable content in the catalog, DVDs, board games, tools, etc. if you visit us at the branches.

But our 2024 Staff Picks allow the AADL crew to go beyond the library catalog—and the calendar year.

We don't limit our year in review to things that came out in 2024 or that can be checked out from AADL; the staff comments on whatever favorite media and events they experienced this year, no matter when or where they originated. Maybe a favorite album of 2024 came out in 1973, or the best book someone read this year is so old that it's out of copyright. It's all good, and it all counts.

Here are the categories of AADL's 2024 Staff Picks:

➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Homepage
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Screens
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Audio
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Pulp Life
 

AADL 2024 STAFF PICKS: WORDS
Books, audiobooks, graphic novels, comics, websites, and more:

➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Homepage
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Words
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Audio
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Pulp Life
 

AADL 2024 STAFF PICS: SCREENS
TV, movies, DVDs, video games, YouTube, streaming, etc.

➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Homepage
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Words
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Screens
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Pulp Life

AADL 2024 STAFF PICS: AUDIO
Music, podcasts, CDs, records, and more:

➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Homepage
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Words
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Screens
➥ AADL 2024 Staff Picks: Audio
 

AADL 2024 STAFF PICS: PULP LIFE
Games, apps, sports, outdoors, and any other kind of hard-to-categorize cultural and life activities:

Ann Arbor has celebrated its 200th anniversary throughout 2024 with numerous citywide events and initiatives. But a recent exhibit drills down to the first 50 years of the town's formation.

The Museum on Main is a two-story yellow-beige house just north of downtown, at the five-point intersection where Main and Kingsley Streets meet with the end of one-way Beakes Street.

The museum is hosting Ann Arbor's Story: The First 50 Years, a revealing look at the beginnings of European settlement in the area, through its first half-century of officially existing as a village, long before it became a city. Photographs, maps, and original documents provide a revealing and humanizing view of a past, which can seem so foreign to 21st-century America, making the exhibit worth the 15 minutes or so most people will take to go through it.

The Museum on Main's website explains the people, places, and things that comprise the exhibition:

Our trip to Debuck’s Family Farm Tulip Festival started online. I had seen a gorgeous photo of vibrantly colored tulips as I mindlessly scrolled on my phone in what I like to think of as bedtime vacation. I wondered where these tulips were, and found that they were in Belleville.

“Our Belleville?” I thought.

After checking the family calendar and the weather forecast, we landed on Sunday at 11 am and purchased our timed ticket. At the point of sale, the forecast for Sunday was a warm and sunny day, closer to 80 than 70 degrees. When we loaded into the car, it was 63 degrees outside and the sky was decidedly gray.

I had prepped our four-year-old son for an adventure the day before, asking him if he wanted to see some colorful flowers. When I asked him whether he wanted me to tell him what kind of flowers we were going to see, or if he wanted to be surprised, he replied, “I want to go to an aquarium of flowers.”

Maybe he willed the rain upon us.

People who work at the Ann Arbor District Library love to give recommendations.

Whether in person at one of the five branches, in the News and Reviews section of AADL's website, or right here at Pulp, highlighting our favorite books, films, TV shows, video games, websites, adventures, and more is just part of the gig.

Like you, we are passionate enjoyers of media and experiences.

This is our seventh year compiling Ann Arbor District Library staff picks—and with more than 40,000 words spread out over four posts, it is the longest edition yet.

To reiterate: We. Love. To. Give. Recommendations.

Here are the creative works and experiences we discovered in 2023 that moved us enough to share them with you. (Not that you needed to twist our arms.)

➥ AADL 2023 Staff Picks: Words
➥ AADL 2023 Staff Picks: Screens
➥ AADL 2023 Staff Picks: Audio
➥ AADL 2023 Staff Picks: Pulp Life