Review of book from Ohio history

Just heard a good review about a novel with some local history connection. Thought I'd pass it one. A patron just came in today and started talking about how good this books was. I'm attaching a review from a blog I follow in the title of the post. The Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is about black slavey in southwest Ohio. When a patron comes in raving about a book that she just read librarians have to sit up and take notice. It's just part of the job description. Listen to your patrons. I love it when they like a book so much that they have to talk about it. For me, the real deal when it comes to bibliophilia, it is a highlight of my day to receive a good recommendation from a patron. I also like to listen when the staff shares good reads with me too. Yesterday Julie was telling me about the Lonely Polygamist by Bradley Udall. She says I have to read it, it's really out loud funny in parts. That makes a story special to me. Another one of my patrons was telling me that I had brought the book Marley and Me by John Grogan to his wife as part of our homebound delivery here at the library. He is in the nursing home, and as I walked by his door, he was reading the book. His wife brought it to him because she had enjoyed it so much. He said he was chuckling in some parts and was glad to have it for a change from the newspaper. Later in the day, my friend recommended Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen, written in a child's point of view. She said it was the best book she's read all year. All of these have to be placed on my To-Be-Read pile. Right now I'm reading Pat Conroy's latest, South of Broad Street. It has grabbed me from the beginning, the description gives me the immediate feeling of being in his home town, Charleston, South Carolina. I want to be with him, and he is making me see this place through his eyes. As I read I am amassed by his poetic language. "I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like a hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen." I could read language like that all day. I wonder how many book recommendations will come my way today.

Non-Fiction Scientific Writing reads as fiction

The Immortality of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a nonfiction book by a science writer. It is the story of an African American woman who died in the fifties of cervical cancer at John Hopkins Hospital. Her cancer cells were harvested for research and became the first human cells growing in a lab. Named HeLa, John Hopkins shared these cells with other research teams around the world and HeLa became the most widely used human cells used for research, eventually helping scientists develop the vaccine for polio as only the beginning of biomedical research. Skloot is revealing the woman behind the cells, her family and the medical practices of the fifties. The poor black family of Henrietta Lacks doesn't learn of the importance of her cells until the seventies. Rebecca Skloot brings the family to life in her book as she details the emotional trauma of hidden medical practices and their effect on the family. Excellent, engrossing, and remarkable reporting. Oprah has picked it up for a movie on HBO.

The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, his third Robert Langdon novel, is by far his best. True to his previous mysteries, Brown captures the hidden secrets found in a city, this time Washington D.C. Instead of the Catholic church he focused his attention on the Order of Masons, a secret society covering many centuries, with George Wahington being one of the most famous masons in American history. As I followed the mystery thriller I became interested in the truth of his work. This is part of the major appeal of Dan Brown's work. It is seeped in history and the occult. The occult stands for hidden, the secrets that behind the traditions. As any reader of historical fiction, I am drawn to the actual history. I want to know more about the undergound tunnels in our nation's capital. I timed my reading of the Lost Symbol to my actual visit to Washington, D.C. and that only added to my enjoyment of my trip. To learn more about the capital, try The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital: the Masons and the Building of Washington, D.C. by David Ovason, 2000.