Ah, the summer picnic–get up early, collect cooler, charcoal, blankets (for the all-important nap), bug spray, and outdoor games, then head to a State Park or other recreation area for the day. A simple pleasure that we can forget in our hurried lives, so look into this list to see if a picnic isn’t a memory you’d like to revisit soon. — Sherry Utterback, Central Librarian and assembler of this booklist.

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism. — Erma Bombeck

On the NPR show This American Life, host Ira Glass was interviewing Jonathan Morris, who maintains the Gone and Forgotten website about comic book super-heroes who never saw the big time. One of them was Ant Man, who had the “ability to control ants.” Glass and Morris laughed about this worthless ability, but then Glass suggested that this hero could “invade the picnics of super-villains.” It was funny when Glass said it. Click on the This American Life link (above) and listen to the episode. You can scroll forward to “Act Three” (at about 38:00) for the Morris interview.

Summer begins in just a few days. Have a great Fourth, and a great summer.