Book Reviews Five and Six: Critical Care and Bonobo Handshake

I am kind of a medical junkie. I love all the real-life medical shows on TV, movies about medicine and books about it. I think if I had two eyes that worked and two good hands, I migght have gone into medicine. Theresa Brown's Critical Care was a good way to get my medical fix. It's a recounting of Brown's first year as a nurse on a medical oncology floor. She had come to nuring late after teaching English at a majore university, so it was really well  written. It was sad, but she was writing about cancer paitents so I wasn't so surprised. It  was good.

Vanessa Wood's Bonobo Handshake was good too. It was about the author's time in Congo studying bonobos and chimps. It had a lot of history of the wars fought in Congo and Rwanda. Which was the best part for me.

I am woefully behind on these. I am current on book ten of the year. Stay tuned for more.

Book Reviews Three and Four: Dexter in the Dark and Dexter by Design

I decided to make this book post a joint review of two books that are part of a series. Jeff Lindsay's friendly serial killer is about to take the plunge. Mild-mannered forensic geek Dexter Morgan has a dark secret. He likes to kill people by night. He follows a strict code in order to ensure that he only targets those who are  guilty of often heinous crimes. He accidently proposes to his long time girlfriend, who has two children by a scumbag, and that's pretty much all you need to know about the plots.
These books were only mediocre at best. I  love the TV show based on them, but honestly, these were only good because of that show.

Oh well, Books number five and six were and are amazing. Stay tuned!

Book Review Two: The Help

Kathryn Stockett's debut effort The Help will forever be a favorite of mine. It is at times hilarious,at others heartbreaking. It is an important book.

Skeeter, Hillly, and Elizabeth are best friends in Jackson Missippi in 1962. They are white and well off. Each of their families employs a black woman as a maid. Aibileen and Minny are best friends too. They live in the poor section of Jackson. They each work as maids and nannies for white families of Jackson. This is the story of what happens when these two worlds colide.

After Hilly ddeclares her intention to build her maid Aibleen a seperate bathroom to reduce her family's risk of catching disease from Aibileen, Skeeter decides to write the stories of the maids of the city. What follows is an examination of the Civil Rights movement through these these women's stories.

I loved how this book used real historical events to spotlight the racial tensions in the country. Everything from the student sit-ins at Woolworth's to the Freedom Riders and Dr. King's March on Washington were mentioned/ When you learned about the Civil Rights Movement you often only heard about the leaders who fearlessly faced danger, went to jail or even died for the cause. The people in this book are different. They are afraid. They look at the monumental changes on the horizon with suspicion and distrust. This is refreshing to see in a telling of the Civil Rights story.

Read this book. Plain and simple.

The One Where I Talk About Books

Every year I set a goal to read 52 books. I can never read fast enough. Usually I hit 32ish. This year with the help of my e-reader, I hope to reach it! My first book of the year was the young adult smash hit Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. The third installment to the Hunger Games trilogy was an appropriator end to this adventurous series. Here's a quick summary of the series.

Katniss Everdeen lives in a world kind of like the U.S. of today, but not really called Panem. It is set in the near future and the parcels of land that make up Panem are distinguished by the resource(s) they bring to the Capitol. District 12 where Katniss lives is a coal mining superpower. Other districts are know for their fishing sailing prowess or their ability to produce food. Regardless of which district you are from, it is difficult being a child in Panem. For sport, two children from each district are selected to participate in an event called The Hunger Games. 24 children are set free in a tightly controlled environment. The rest you'll have to imagine or read for yourselves.

I liked this book a lot. My only negative feedback is that these seem too harsh to be marketed to kids. Some of the story is very dark and graphic.

Next up is The Help. Watch for my review of that soon!

Oh E-reader How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.

A few weeks ago, a little birdie told me to watch my mail for a Christmas gift. Late that week, a smallish box emblazoned with the logo of a ginormous internet retailer appeared at my door. I immediately called  my mom to ask if I could open the box right then. She said no, not wanting me to wreck Christmas. Luckily my grandmother, the giver of the gift gave her permission to open the box.Grammy was always our sugar dealer as kids, doling out extra dollops of whipped cream over our parents objections. Giving us another cookie even though we'd already had three. I equate her allowing me to open this present early to those acts of generous spoiling. She is still my sugar dealer, only instead of food she gave me amazing technology.

I have been very resistant to the whole e-reader thing. I LOVE books. My favorite smells in the world are "new book" and "very old book." One speaks of a promise of adventure, the other holds the history of each reader to hold the book. I was sure I would go  into withdrawl, pine for my old friends paperbacks if ever I made the leap to e-reader-land. While I will always love the heft of paper and cloth, I cannot imagine my reading life without my e-reader. I downloaded a book from ny library the first night I had it and haven't looked back.

Here is a rundown of some of my favorite things.

1) The ability to increase text size as needed. This feature means that anything I want to read I can read. With regular books, the size of the text in a book determined whether I could be interested in it or not. Now if a book I want to read has small print in it's orignal form, I can easily increase the text size with a few taps to the touch-screen device.

2) It is lighter than a paperback. Muscle fatigue is sometimes a factor in what I can or cannot read. Large books can mean I can't take them to bed with me because there would be nothing to rest the bulk bof the book on. This problem is totally resolved with my e-reader. The other day, I was reading a 600-page book, and I couldn't believe that I was holding it with one hand. Awesome.

3) The built in dictionary. It just makes me feel smarter. My gastroparesis is throwing me all kinds of new terminology, and with a few taps I can learn the meaning of any word that has me stumped.

4) The capacticy. 3,000 books would be hard for me to reach. The idea that I can be carrying around that many books makes me drool. I can also read a lot faster on it than with a regular book. In the three weeks I've had the device, I've read six books. Two books  per weeks, pretty amazing.

I am officially an e-reader convert.