illness & disease

 

The next Genre Reading Group meeting is Tuesday, April 27th on Zoom at 6:30pm and the topic up for discussion is international authors.  The third row of Shelf Care has some selections to choose from if you don’t know where to start: https://oneallibrary.org/adults---reading-recommendations

Last night, on GRG’s one year Zoomiversary, we met to discuss illness & disease, a timely topic in the age of COVID. Here are the books we read:

The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenney

A vivid, sweeping history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease, for readers of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and John Barry’s The Great Influenza.

Zombie Makers: True Stories of Natures Undead by Rebecca Johnson

Are zombies real? As far as we know, dead people do not come back to life and start walking around, looking for trouble. But there are things that can take over the bodies and brains of innocent creatures, turning them into senseless slaves. Meet nature's zombie makers―including a fly-enslaving fungus, a suicide worm, and a cockroach-taming wasp―and their victims.

Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang and Michael Berry

From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry

The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. 

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik

The most fatal virus known to science, rabies-a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans-kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. In this critically acclaimed exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years of the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies.

Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad by Peter Hotez

In 1994, Peter J. Hotez's nineteen-month-old daughter, Rachel, was diagnosed with autism. Dr. Hotez, a pediatrician-scientist who develops vaccines for neglected tropical diseases affecting the world's poorest people, became troubled by the decades-long rise of the influential anti-vaccine community and its inescapable narrative around childhood vaccines and autism.

Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization by Elena Conis

With employers offering free flu shots and pharmacies expanding into one-stop shops to prevent everything from shingles to tetanus, vaccines are ubiquitous in contemporary life. Yet, while vaccination rates have soared and cases of preventable infections have plummeted, an increasingly vocal cross section of Americans have questioned the safety and necessity of vaccines. In Vaccine Nation, Elena Conis explores this complicated history and its consequences for personal and public health.

Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs by Michael Osterholm

A leading epidemiologist shares his "powerful and necessary" (Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone) stories from the front lines of our war on infectious diseases and explains how to prepare for global epidemics.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing Winner of the John Burroughs Medal Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in Natural History Literature

In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, Elisabeth Tova Bailey shares an inspiring and intimate story of her encounter with a Neohelix albolabris—a common woodland snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own place in the world.

Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poet’s Respond to the Pandemic edited by Alice Quinn

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.

An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System, A Tale in Four Lives by Matt Richtel

Drawing on his groundbreaking reporting for the New York Times and based on extensive new interviews with dozens of world-renowned scientists (including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), Matt Richtel has produced a landmark book, equally an investigation into the deepest riddles of survival and a profoundly human tale that is movingly brought to life through the eyes of his four main characters, each of whom illuminates an essential facet of our “elegant defense.”

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted -- and often permanently altered -- global politics, race relations and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion and the arts.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston

The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery.

Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science by Peter Hotez

The last five years saw a significant return of epidemic infectious disease, culminating in COVID-19. In our new post–COVID-19 world, how do we prevent future illnesses by expanding scientific and vaccine diplomacy and cooperation, especially to combat the problems that humans have brought on ourselves?

Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor Amid Wealth by Peter Hotez

Clear, compassionate, and timely, Blue Marble Health is a must-read for leaders in global health, tropical medicine, and international development, along with anyone committed to helping the millions of people who are caught in the desperate cycle of poverty and disease.

Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (requires a Netflix subscription, check your streaming/online rental channels for additional availability)

Take a trip inside the mind of Bill Gates as the billionaire opens up about those who influenced him and the audacious goal’s he’s still pursuing.

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy Winegard

A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Here he examines its ultimate limitations and failures―in his own practices as well as others'―as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life―all the way to the very end.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to see and, by blinking it, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired. Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest detail: dictating a word at a time, blinking to select each letter as the alphabet was recited to him slowly, over and over again. In the same way, he was able eventually to compose this extraordinary book.

Hidden Killers of the English Home (requires an Amazon Prime Video subscription, Check your streaming/online rental channels for additional availability)

We all know that “an Englishman’s home is his castle.” British historian Suzannah Lipscomb beckons us to get off the sofa and look closely at legendary structures from Edwardians, Victorian, Tudor, and even modern times. The myth of the historic English home, with its legendary comforts and warmth, quickly yields to a nightmare of infestations, toxic materials, and unsafe construction practices.

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the “wonder” substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...

Made into a feature film in late 2020. Requires a Netflix subscription, check your streaming/online rental channels for additional availability.

Suspected origins of the plague doctor mask shape:

https://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2008/01/08/bird-hats-and-wax-pants-antipl

 

 

 

 

spring releases

 

Spring has sprung, time change and all, pollen abounds, and the Spring Break holiday is here.  Challenge yourself with these recommendations from popular magazines and morning shows.

Authors Isaac Fitzgerald and Jasmine Guillory joined the TODAY show to share highly anticipated spring releases:

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

After Grace Porter finishes her PhD in Astronomy, she heads to Las Vegas to celebrate. Once there, she does something wildly out of character: drunkenly marries a woman she’s just met. This massive deviation allows her to take stock of her life and stop considering what she’s supposed to do and start considering what she wants to do.

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

Engel’s new novel tells the story of a family of five split between the United States and Colombia because of a deportation. The novel, which is structured around the family’s youngest member’s race to make it from a correctional facility in the mountains to Bogotá in time for her flight to the United States, gives voice to each member. Engel’s book coalesces into a beautiful story of determination and love.

Once Upon a Quinceanera by Monica Gomez-Hira

Guillory calls “Once Upon A Quinceanera” by Monica Gomez-Hira “a funny, absorbing, joyful, emotional powerhouse of a book. In this Young Adult novel, Carmen Aguilar struggles through an unpaid summer internship and some unpleasant familial obligations which are standing in the way of her finding her happily-ever-after.

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

In “No One Is Talking About This” by Patricia Lockwood, a woman who becomes famous for her viral tweets allows the internet to become more and more a part of her life until she is jolted back offline by a family emergency. Lockwoood’s debut novel is hilarious, incisive, and moving.

Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir by Rebecca Carroll

Rebecca Carroll grew up as the only black person in her town, her artistic adoptive parents unprepared to support her as she needed. When she eventually met her birth mother, a white woman, her sense of identity was rocked further. In her new memoir, she shares these stories and how she ultimately created a chosen black family and found a way to heal.

Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America by Kate Washington

In this heartbreaking memoir, Kate Washington shares the story of her time acting as caregiver for her extremely ill husband. Through her experience, she exposes the sacrifices that many loved ones have to make to bolster the United States healthcare system.

Elle Magazine offers the longlisted titles vying for the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year:

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

This Booker prize 2020 shortlisted debut novel chronicles Tara, an old woman who years before fled an arranged marriage and lived a very different life to the one planned for her. Now old, and with a daughter caring for her with whom she has a complex and fraught relationship, their truths unravel together.

Consent by Annabel Lyon

The book tells the story of two pairs of sisters; In each pairing, one sister is determined and extrovert, Saskia and Jennie and Sara and Mattie. But when both sisters have a life-altering experience, 'Sara and Saskia learn that both their sisters’ lives, and indeed their own, have been altered by the devastating actions of one man'.

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Peter's debut novel is spoken through the lens of both trans and cis women, and speaks to relationships, family dynamics, motherhood, identity and more.

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

The Sunday Times bestseller's debut novel follows 22-year-old Ava on her gap year and all the tales and tribulations that ensue.

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

'The story of three marriages, and of a beautiful island paradise where, beyond the white sand beaches and the wealthy tourists, lies poverty, menacing violence and the story of the sacrifices some women make to survive,' the Women's Prize for Fiction bio reads.

Luster by Raven Leilani

Bronx-born writer Raven Leilani brings to life Edie, who is unfulfilled in a dead-end job in an all-white office and soon becomes embroiled with Eric, a white, middle aged married man in a 'sort-of' open relationship.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

'Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides which thunder up staircases, the clouds which move in slow procession through the upper halls,'

Summer by Ali Smith

‘This is a story about people on the brink of change. They’re family, but they think they’re strangers. So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they’ve got nothing in common have in common?'

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

One of the most hyped reads of the past year, the bestselling story of identical twins who run away from their small, southern Black community aged 16. The book picks up with them 10 years later when they live vastly different lives; one in the same community she tried to escape and one who secretly passes as white with her white husband knowing nothing of their past.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Written by Ghanian born, Alabama raised Yaa Gyasi, the book centers around a family who travelled the same route. But when the main character loses her brother and father, she seeks answers for why life was so cruel for them as immigrants in the American south.

Bloomberg Businessweek magazine recommends adding these titles to your reading list this spring:

Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us by Joseph Andras

In 1956, National Liberation Front member Fernand Iveton planted a bomb near Algiers. The hoped-for explosion was intended only to be a piece of symbolism, and as such, he put it in an unused shed. But its location was academic: He was arrested before it could go off and then mercilessly tortured, brought to trial, and swiftly guillotined. Andras’s fictionalized retelling of Iveton’s saga was published in French in 2016 to immediate acclaim, winning the prestigious Prix Goncourt.

Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II by Daniel Brown

The author of The Boys in the Boat—a bestselling chronicle of rowers competing in the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany—is back, with the story of Japanese-Americans who, after Pearl Harbor, volunteered for service. While they were fighting for their country (and their lives) in Europe, their families faced xenophobia and internment camps back home.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

The author of now-classic titles such as The Remains of the Day, When We Were Orphans, and Never Let Me Go is a master at constructing narratives in which the plot is something very different from what the characters believe they understand. In Ishiguro’s hands, gaps in a character’s memory often are the plot. His latest takes those blind spots to their logical conclusion in the form of a robot named Klara, a so-called Artificial Friend designed to be a child’s companion. 

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

Isaacson’s previous biographies have focused on such men as Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci. Here he tells the story of Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist who won a Nobel Prize for the gene-editing technology known as Crispr. The book is an excellent primer on the complex subject, its benefits (fighting disease), and its ethical hurdles (designer babies).

Letters to Camondo by Edmund de Waal

There are very few commercially successful ceramic artists working today, and even fewer ceramic artists with a side gig as a critically acclaimed author. Best-known for his large-scale installations of exquisitely crafted porcelain and his bestseller The Hare with Amber Eyes, de Waal’s latest piece of fiction combines the two sides of his professional life. This book consists of imaginary letters to the real-life Moïse de Camondo, a fabulously rich Jewish banker who ran one of the most successful institutions in the Ottoman Empire and was also an art patron. His collection, now in the Musée Nissim de Camondo, is one of the jewels of Paris’s museums.

Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal

As anyone who’s loved a book and hated a movie will tell you, it’s very hard to translate the essence of one artistic medium into another. But de Kerangal manages the trick here, following the career of a painter and rendering her search for mastery of a craft in such a way that it reveals the author in full control of her own. Like her earlier novels—The Heart, which gave an in-depth look at organ donation, and The Cook, which does the same for the restaurant industry—Painting Time doesn’t just use paintings to further a story, or as a pretext for enlivening a bit of history. It’s a novel about the creative process itself.

Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick

Most people have experienced some form of Covid isolation. Ozick, 92, who’s been shortlisted for the Pulitzer and Man Booker International prizes, has created a protagonist who’s similarly afflicted, though it’s old age, rather than a pandemic, that finds him holed up indoors. As he embarks on his memoirs, he is drawn, mothlike, to memories of his cousin, a famous archaeologist, and to a mysterious schoolmate.

Second Place by Rachel Cusk

Beloved and reviled in equal measure, Cusk’s startlingly creative autobiographical fiction—most recently in Outline and Transit—has pivoted back to a form bearing an uncanny resemblance to a traditional novel. Her main character, a woman named M who narrates the plot, invites an artist she admires to stay in her guesthouse. The resulting tensions among the home’s inhabitants are rendered in Cusk’s clear, conversational prose.

The Trojan Women: A Comic by Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson

The Athenian playwright Euripides wrote a tragedy 2,500 years ago that followed the women of Troy after the city’s fall. Their husbands killed and their families enslaved, they spend quite a bit of time mourning what they had, and dreading what’s to come. Through millennia the play has remained an enduring testament to so-called collateral damage. Now Carson, a classicist who’s translated Sappho and other ancient poets, partners with Bruno, a visual artist, to create a contemporary update of the story.

Entertainment Weekly polled your favorite Young Adult fiction authors, including Jenny Han, Victoria Aveyard, Kendare Blake, and more, about their spring reading:

Love in Color by Bolu Babalola

"Love in Color is Babalola's debut collection showcases love stories from history and mythology retold with new detail and vivacity. With an eye towards decolonizing tropes inherent in our favorite tales of love, Babalola has created captivating stories that traverse across perspectives, continents, and genres." -Jenny Han

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown

"I'm a sucker for world-building, not to mention bloody twists, and Roseanne Brown's A Song of Wraiths and Ruin has both in spades. I felt absolutely swallowed up by this world and story in the best way. I might be late to the party, but at least I don't have to wait long for the sequel, A Psalm of Storms and Silence, which releases this fall." -Victoria Aveyard

Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant

"In Elise Bryant's Happily Ever Afters, Tessa Johnson writes romance novels, oftentimes starring herself. Tessa is the most relatable character I've ever read, from her love of romance to her experiences with racism to her performance anxiety and imposter syndrome. Tessa is me." -Joya Goffney

When We Were Infinite by Kelly Loy Gilbert

"In When We Were Infinite, Beth witnesses her friend's father assaulting him. Beth leads her close-knit friend group in a desperate effort to save him, but he steadfastly refuses their help. Kelly Loy Gilbert has a way of holding up her characters like jewels to the light so that you can see their flaws and their exquisite beauty, and this book is no exception." – Misa Sgiura

Love in English by Maria E. Andreu

"As a non-native English speaker, I knew Love in English would resonate with me from the moment I heard about it. It tells the story of Ana, an Argentinian immigrant who has to learn English, explore a new culture, and navigate typical high school drama all at the same time. There are budding friendships, swoon-worthy boys, and mouthwatering Argentinian specialties. Maria E. Andreu also peppered the novel with lovely poems that cleverly portray life in a language not yet mastered." – Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado

"I cannot get over how much I loved Crystal Maldonado's Fat Chance, Charlie Vega! I'm a sucker for a good love story, and not only does this have a literal love interest, but it's a love story by Charlie to her body that I couldn't get enough of. The way Charlie comes into her own and claims her space made my heart soar!" – Jason June

Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi

"My pick is Yolk, by Mary H. K. Choi, whose contemporary novels are not only beautifully written, but rife always with emotion and honesty. " -Tahereh Mafi