Category: Non-Fiction

Ever since commuting an hour to grad school, I’ve become an audiobook convert. I find they help me stay focused on driving. Weird, right? But the truth is, I don’t get as annoyed at the stupid drivers and the traffic. I don’t constantly glance at the clock or the GPS to see how much farther I have to go. I get absorbed in the story and actually am disappointed when I reach my destination.

I usually need to listen to a light story, otherwise I have a hard time focusing. I listen to a lot of mystery books and young adult books. It’s easy for me to get engaged in the story, and the narrators are usually pretty good. However, for my car ride home from Christmas – 7 hours with my hubby and my younger brother – I needed something that would appeal to everyone. After waiting for two months, Bossypants arrived from the library just in time for us to make our trip.

Book Review:

Bossypants

By Tina Fey

Bossypants is written (and read, if you get the audiobook) by actress, comedian, writer, and producer Tina Fey. The book is an autobiography about her life, from childhood to 30 Rock. She talks about her Greek childhood, college and her struggles to find a job, her experience as part of a traveling improv group, and moving to Saturday Night Live. From there comes 30 Rock and a side-show on SNL as Sarah Palin. All of this while balancing life at home with her husband and her daughter.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bossypants. Listening to the audiobook, it felt like Fey was simply having a conversation or telling a story. She was witty and sarcastic throughout the book. But at the same time, she brought up serious issues like the struggles she faced early on as a woman in comedy, originally a male-dominated profession. She discussed the difficult game of balancing her career in the public’s eye with her attempts to keep her own political views separate, particularly while performing in the SNL skits featuring Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton.

Recommendation: If you know who Tina Fey is and some of her work, you’ll enjoy this book. I am not generally up on actors/actresses, movies/tv shows (I don’t watch 30 Rock or SNL), and tend to dislike stand-up comedy, but I really enjoyed this book. Fey’s personality and beliefs came through loud and clear. If you don’t know how Tina Fey is, I think you’d still enjoy the book, but you may miss some of the stories and quips (like I did in the chapter on 30 Rock).

Grade: A-

Note: If you listen to the audiobook, Fey refers to several photos that are available on pdf, that comes with the audiobook. Since I was traveling, I did not have these photos readily available. While annoying, it didn’t detract from the book at all.

Book Review:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By Rebecca Skloot

1950s Baltimore, Maryland: Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who grew up a tobacco farmer in Virgina, just gave birth to her fifth child. Shortly after, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and just weeks later, after undergoing radiation treatment, she died. Henrietta didn’t just have cervical cancer – her body had been engulfed by the disease.

Tumors the size of baseballs had nearly replaced her kidneys, bladder, ovaries, and uterus. And her other organs were so covered in small white tumors it looked as if someone has filled her with pearls… (p. 90)

Throughout her treatment and after her death, samples of Henrietta’s cancer cells were taken by Johns Hopkins Hospital and sent to a lab research. Her cells, unlike any other ever discovered, did not die. Instead, they multiplied constantly. Henrietta’s cells, HeLa, become one of the most important advances in medicine – the first immortal cell. Since they’re unable to die, they’re used by scientists across the world to better understand cells themselves, to learn about the impact of diseases on our bodies, and to test new immunizations and antibiotics.

Over the fifty years following Henrietta’s death, Henrietta’s family gradually learned that their wife’s/mother’s cells still lived. Their fight for information, years after Henrietta died, and their struggle to understand what has happened to Henrietta is difficult to describe. It’s scary to imagine living in such ignorance. It’s scary not being able to understand scientists’ and doctors’ explanations and the sci-fi like headlines in newspapers and magazines. The Lacks family, particularly daughter Deborah, took over a year to trust the author of this book, Rebecca Skloot. Then together, the Lackses and Skloot embarked on a journey to learn about Henrietta’s life and her life after death.

Review: The story flips between past and present, which actually make the book very easy to read. When I heard about it, I was concerned that it would be far too scientific, and frankly a bit boring. I was completely wrong. I was completely sucked into Henrietta’s story and didn’t want to put the book down.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks combines the stories of Henrietta’s life, her daughter’s journey to learn about her, and the progress medicine has made as a result of her cells. The book is much more about the woman behind HeLa, her family, and history – African America history and medical history – than about the nuances of science. It is simply astonishing to think of the advances made over the past 50 years…. the differences in race relations, the increase in education among the general population (and thus, the way we perceive and treat those in the medical field), the advances in medicine (from diagnosis to treatments).

While the book was just a glimpse into these advances, it made a serious impression on me. It’s made me want to go back to the library for another book that will tie in with one of the themes in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks rather than work on my large to-read-before-I-move stack on my bookshelf.

Recommendation: If you love history, memoirs, or science, this is a must read.  If you don’t, I’d still recommend it. So basically, no matter who you are, read this book.

Grade: A

Book Review:

First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria

By Eve Brown-Waite

First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria is a cute story about the author’s years in Ecuador through the Peace Corps and then in Uganda with her former Peace Corps-recruiter-turned-husband through CARE, another non-governmental organization. Brown-Waite detailed – in her funny and slightly sarcastic voice – her short Peace Corps adventure in Ecuador, falling in love with her recruiter back in the States, and their 3 years living in Uganda.

I appreciated Brown-Waite’s manner of storytelling and could see her maturing as the memoir progressed. When the book began, Brown-Waite was in her early 20s, and there were the stories about falling head over heals in love and her idealism about saving the underdeveloped peoples of Ecuador. At this time, Brown-Waite clearly seemed like both a young, silly girl and a bit spoiled. But with age and experience (Ecuador, marriage, schooling, and finally Uganda), Brown-Waite matured substantially.

First Comes Love, then Comes Malaria was a fascinating glimpse into life in a third-world country, the struggles faced, and the interesting contrast between the seemingly elite Western CARE representatives to the native Ugandans.

Recommendation: I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a lighter read, but something much different from most books on the shelves (or at least the ones I’ve come across!).

Grade: B+