Books – Page 27 – Books Can Save A Life

She wanted to decode her beautiful, quirky genome

July 8, 2012March 18, 2013 Valorie Grace Hallinan1 Comment

…we are each of us temporary depositories of information that has an almost eternal life, and which is passed on and on and on… Lone Frank, My Beautiful Genome

Staring at the luminous model of the strand of DNA on my computer screen, a sculpture of great beauty, perfect function, and masterful design, I wondered. Who is the designer? And is this a question that even makes sense?

I say perfect function but, when it isn’t perfect, there can be disease, pain, suffering. Or simply quirkiness that doesn’t amount to much, just makes you a little different – a bit of rheumatism in your right big toe, for example, so you can’t wear high heels.

My medical librarian colleagues and I were learning how to search the data generated from the Human Genome Project and other ongoing genetics-based research. Our instructor, a bioinformatics librarian with a PH.D. in molecular biology and years of research under her belt, showed us how to look up the gene associated with cystic fibrosis in humans. We found a map of the gene’s location on a specific chromosome and links to places where you can order a clone of the DNA for research.

And over the course of the two-day class, our instructor, who is also a storyteller, told us the tale of research into the human genome, the explosion of data that’s resulted in a very short time, and how far we’ve yet to go.

A few months later, I discovered Lone Frank’s My Beautiful Genome: Exposing Our Genetic Future, One Quirk at a Time and added it to my reading list. Over the next weeks, I’ll be reading and discussing it on Books Can Save a Life as I decide whether or not to explore my own beautiful, quirky genome. I’m reasonably certain I will explore my genome unless I’m persuaded otherwise. It’s not a matter of if, but when. There is so much turmoil and confusion surrounding consumer-based genetic testing, I may wait until things settle down a bit.

The lure of this kind of knowledge – the secret of my own, one-of-a-kind, unlike-no-other-in-the-history-of-the-world genetic makeup – is something I don’t think I can resist for long, though.

As with everyone else, it’s personal.

My genetic make-up was of special concern years ago when my husband and I were deciding whether to have children. We’d gone to a genetic counselor to find out the chances of our children inheriting my mother’s schizophrenia. Fortunately, they were quite low. The counselor could tell us this by simply taking a family history and looking at the heritability data of the grandchildren of people with schizophrenia.

More recently, I was curious to know what the Human Genome Project and other research has revealed about the heritability of schizophrenia, and what a look at my signature genome might tell me. I’ll be exploring that, among other things, as I make my way through My Beautiful Genome.

Possessing this kind of personal genetic knowledge will become commonplace, I believe, and learning how to live with it ethically, in a way that will benefit humanity, will be one of the great adventures of our time.

Do you think we’re overreaching, like the mythic Prometheus? Wanting to know more than is good for us and we can responsibly handle? Please comment if you have thoughts about this.

Mindfulness Meditation

In My Beautiful Genome, Lone Frank talks about how everything we perceive is filtered through our brains, which are influenced by our genes, and how our behavior may be genetically determined. I just happen to be starting a mindfulness meditation class that will take place over the next several weeks. It will be my second time through this type of meditation instruction, a refresher that will bolster the meditation practice I began five years ago. So, while I read My Beautiful Genome, I’ll also be highlighting some of my favorite books about meditation. If you’ve tried meditation yourself or have a practice, please join in the discussion.

Quote from My Beautiful Genome: Exposing Our Genetic Future, One Quirk at a Time, by Lone Frank, Oneworld Publications, 2011.

She read The Lord of the Rings and said what you’re not supposed to say to get the job

July 4, 2012July 4, 2012 Valorie Grace Hallinan7 Comments

…everyone deserves these chances, moments when something pierces the everyday and points a path toward health and wholeness, toward growth and adventure and change. – Adrienne Furness

In February, when we began talking about The Hunger Games (the book and the movie), I asked readers to share books that affected them in a profound way when they were growing up.

A couple of people said The Lord of the Rings trilogy had been an unforgettable and transformative reading experience. I considered writing about J. R. Tolkien’s trilogy on Books Can Save a Life, but I knew I couldn’t do his books justice. I’d read Tolkien when I was young, but for whatever reason his fantasy novels didn’t speak to me in the way they have to countless other readers.

Then the other day I visited a favorite blog, What Adrienne Thinks About That, authored by a librarian friend, Adrienne Furness. Adrienne is a superb librarian and a superb writer. Anyone, child or adult, who walks into her library is very lucky indeed. She has just become director of the Henrietta Public Library, and there’s a story behind how that came about.

Adrienne graciously agreed to let me re-post her story:

When I went on my interview, the hiring committee asked me why I became a librarian. For many years now, people who give advice on these matters have been telling librarians not to answer this question, “Because I love to read.”

But I answered this question the same way I’ve answered it in every single job interview I’ve ever gone on. I told the truth.

I became a librarian because I love to read.

I tell this story often because it was a moment that’s defined my life: I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time when I was in the fifth grade. I got to the end and was overwhelmed by the sadness of the story being over, and so I got my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and read the whole trilogy again.

I’ve reread the series more times than I can count. My love for these books has nothing to do with elves or magic or swords, although those things are all fine, as far as I’m concerned. What makes me return to this story again and again, though, is the notion of life as a quest. My fifth grade self couldn’t have articulated what she found in those books, but I know now that I needed to see that even the smallest person can step away from comfort and into challenge, that change is possible on scales small and large, that our efforts and intentions matter. The story reinforced for me that there are things in this world worth protecting–fellowship and love, food and conversation, adventure and courage, songs and stories. These are the things that sustain us when life is difficult, when we are hurt or afraid and have to be so much braver than we feel.

These books told me to find people who value the things I do and to treasure them, because they are essential. That’s a lesson that led me from fifth grade straight to this moment when I’m sitting here writing this to you.

I’ll never know how many lives have changed because of a book I made sure was on the shelf or something I helped someone find, but I’ll spend my last couple weeks at WPL watching children check out stacks of books, knowing that some of them will find something that will still matter to them when they’re adults trying to figure out this world that defies understanding.

I became a librarian because everyone deserves these chances, moments when something pierces the everyday and points a path toward health and wholeness, toward growth and adventure and change.

I believe we all get to write our own stories. When I was in fifth grade, I decided my story was going to be a little epic.

I like the way that’s working out so far.

About Adrienne

Henrietta Public Library’s newly appointed director, Adrienne Furness, was formerly head of the Children’s Department at the Webster Public Library in Webster, NY, where she managed over $100,000 in grants focused on providing better services to homeschoolers in Monroe County, expanding the reach of storytimes and other literature-based programs, and creating a space for tweens in the Children’s Room.

Adrienne is the author of Helping Homeschoolers in the Library, ALA Editions, 2008. She has taught library staff all over the country about working with homeschoolers, and has published articles in Library Journal, School Library Journal, Public Libraries, Children and Libraries, and AudioFile Magazine.

Share your book stories

If you’d like to share a story about a book that is special to you, send an email to valoriegracehallinan[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject line: My Book Story. Please include a post of about 500 words or less in the body of the email or an idea/book you’re interested in writing about.

What my best friend never told me

June 30, 2012July 3, 2012 Valorie Grace Hallinan4 Comments

…he had doubts, like me, about who he was.

Korean mother and child — Nena (Ho Mi Hyung) and her Korean mother, Ho Soon Ja, 1956

After I asked readers to share stories about books that have made a difference in their lives, I was thrilled to hear from my best friend from childhood.

Nena Adams Benhoff and I go way back. We shared Nancy Drew books. We played piano duets and went to Brownie meetings together. We were in Mrs. Ryan’s kindergarten class of 1960 at Broadway Elementary School. Nena’s first job was in my family’s flower shop, where my father taught her floral design.

Sometimes I was a little jealous of Nena, because she was something of a celebrity in our town.

But even best friends don’t tell each other everything, and I didn’t know the whole story.

So when she sent this guest post, I was amazed. I’m still getting to know my best friend after all these years.

Here is Nena’s story.

I was born in South Korea and adopted by an American family when I was 15 months old. In my new hometown, it was a newsworthy occasion because foreign country adoptions were unheard of in the 1950s. Articles were printed in the Cleveland Press, The Plain Dealer, and the local papers. My life story was known to just about everyone in our town.

When I started school, my teachers always spoke about how wonderful it was that I, a poor little Korean orphan, was given a chance to grow up in the United States. I was expected to bring in my Korean clothes to share with the class and talk about Korea. Now, I had no memories of Korea, I wasn’t even walking when I arrived, so I really didn’t have anything to share. Only half Korean, I thought I looked more Italian than Asian. Everyone thought I should think and act Korean, when I looked and thought, “American.”

I was confused about myself and my place in the world.

When I was about thirteen, a librarian recommended a book to read.

That book was The New Year by Pearl S. Buck, the story of a mixed race boy, half Korean and half Caucasian, who was brought to the United States by his birth father’s wife at the age of ten. While his story was not at all like mine, he had doubts, like me, about who he was. In Korea he was considered American, while in the United States he was considered Korean. Pearl Buck explained about mixed race children being like “bridge organisms,” not wholly of one world or another, but joining the best attributes of both.

After reading The New Year, I must admit I was thinking quite highly of myself, as being better than anyone!

But after a short time, I came back to reality, and started the journey of just becoming myself.

Nena Adams Benhoff has been a floral designer for over forty years. She lives in Oklahoma City.

The New Year is out of print but available from used booksellers and libraries.

About Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938 and the Pulitzer Prize, among other high honors and awards. She published dozens of novels, as well as short stories, biographies, and other nonfiction.

Visit Book Tips – Pearl S. Buck on the official site of the Nobel Prize to see comments by readers of Pearl Buck’s books, and to comment on your favorite books by Nobel Prize winners.

Share your book stories

In Rogan’s The Lifeboat, it’s a man’s world

June 24, 2012July 2, 2012 Valorie Grace Hallinan4 Comments

In my last post, I said the women fared better than the men in Charlotte Rogan’s book The Lifeboat.

Once the survivors are back on land, though, it’s still a man’s world.

Narrator Grace Winter is on trial for murder. In 1914, all the lawyers for the prosecution and the defense are men. The judge is a man. All the laws were written by men. The psychiatrist appointed to appraise Grace’s sanity and her true motives is, of course, a man.

Reading The Lifeboat and trying to imagine what the characters and the times were like, I recalled scenes from Titanic, the movie. I thought about Rose (Kate Winslet) being pressured by her mother to marry the wealthy son of a steel magnate to save her family from financial ruin.

Then there is Downton Abbey’s Mary Crawley of the same time period, disinherited from the family fortune by a distant male cousin.

In fact, Grace is on the lifeboat in the first place because she was on her honeymoon voyage, having pulled off marrying the already-engaged banker Henry Winter to save herself from having to be a governess.

A seismic male-female battle occurs in The Lifeboat, but it is never really acknowledged or spoken of aloud. Some of the most revealing dialogue occurs in whispers among the desperate survivors.

We can see where the conversation about gender issues is at a century later by reading the provocative piece published in The Atlantic this past week. Written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, it’s called “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” (not my first choice for a title.)

Slaughter quotes Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: “Women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in the world, 13 percent are women. In the corporate sector, [the share of] women at the top….tops out at 15, 16 percent.”

Quote: Slaughter, Anne-Marie. “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” The Atlantic, July/August. 2012.

The men and women don’t get along on The Lifeboat

June 17, 2012June 21, 2012 Valorie Grace Hallinan5 Comments

He’s a man. Most men think they are God.

If you’re a man who ends up on Lifeboat 14 adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, you’d better play your cards right.

The women tend to fare better.

On this particular lifeboat, being a traditional male authority figure of the time (1914) will take you only so far. Whereas, if you get along with people, if you’re nurturing and supportive, if you’re a rock of strength and give people what they need, even though you’re a woman you can then manipulate them just a little to get them to do what you want…..

Charlotte Rogan’s The Lifeboat is the PERFECT book for reading groups and book clubs, especially those with both men and women, because you’re going to have great discussions about gender, the battle of the sexes, how men and women use each other…..the whole ball of wax when it comes to male/female relations.

And that’s just scratching the surface of this confounding book.

The Lifeboat is about morality – the difficult, impossible choices we make to survive, and how we justify those choices after the fact.

It’s the kind of book I want my family and friends to read so they can help me sort out who is right and who is wrong, which characters have the moral high ground and which ones don’t.

On page 16, at the end of the chapter entitled “Day One,” the narrator, Grace Winter, makes a statement I found morally repugnant. I don’t like this woman, I thought. In her place, I’d make a very different decision.

Or would I?

If you’re reading or have read The Lifeboat, what do you think it says about men and women? Are there particular incidents from the book you can’t get out of your mind? Does it leave you feeling morally confused? Please comment below. I’d love to hear from men and women!

Quote is from The Lifeboat, Charlotte Rogan, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2012

What I didn’t expect about The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

June 14, 2012June 21, 2012 Valorie Grace HallinanLeave a comment

The saddest thing about the sacrifice was that it was being made for people such as we.

Thirty-nine men and women adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, 1914.

What I hadn’t expected about The Lifeboat is how my feelings toward newlywed Grace Winter (the narrator) would constantly change.

How one minute I like her, and the next minute, I don’t.

How sometimes Grace is full of insight, and other times she’s fooling herself.

How, just like the jury and her lawyers, I’m constantly trying to figure out if she’s telling the truth.

I hadn’t expected a grand battle of the sexes. As if they don’t have enough to contend with.

I’m wondering how this will end.

Subtle, masterful writing by Charlotte Rogan.

If you’re reading The Lifeboat, too, what do you think? Please share your comments.

Quote from The Lifeboat, Charlotte Rogan, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2012

I found enlightenment in the Pacific Northwest

June 4, 2012August 10, 2023 Valorie Grace Hallinan2 Comments

In May, I happily stumbled on the secret to enlightenment when I attended the Medical Library Association (MLA) annual meeting in Seattle and vacationed with my family in the Cascades.

It all started with MLA speaker and best-selling author Steven Johnson, who told us about a theory he encountered while researching his latest book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. (Steven is a great speaker, not to mention that he reminds me of one of my favorite Downton Abbey characters.)

Some believe the 18th century’s Age of Enlightenment occurred, in part, when the middle class switched from alcohol to coffee and tea as their beverage of choice. With clean drinking water scarce, people drank ale or wine, even for breakfast. When coffee and tea imports became available, many switched from alcohol – a depressant – to caffeine, a stimulant.

Coffeehouses, where “ideas [could] spill from one mind to another,” became popular, according to Johnson. “The coffeehouse was a multidisciplinary space.” (So are libraries, he said, in a nod to his audience.) People from all walks of life who normally would not encounter one another engaged in “a diversity of conversations.”

So, coffee and tea led people to a kind of hyperactive exchange of ideas, which in turn led to innovation.

Johnson predicts that the internet and social media are a new kind of global, virtual coffeehouse spawning another great age of innovation.

I experienced coffee and coffeehouses on an entirely new level during my stay in Washington. In Rochester, New York, we don’t have drive-through espresso kiosks as in the Pacific Northwest. They are ubiquitous in the Seattle area, even on the edge of wilderness. Up in the Cascades, if you need a dentist, quick, or someone who knows how to repair a transmission, you may be out of luck – but you can almost always find a cup of coffee.

My theory is, there is so little sunshine people need the caffeine to keep going.

At any rate, I also noticed that the Pacific Northwest has thriving literary communities. People here really appreciate books, and they love coffee, and they love combining the two.

For me, the combination of exceptional coffee, great bookstores, access to the internet and, last but certainly not least, absolutely stunning scenery and fresh, mountain air, was so invigorating. I felt the ideas flowing. Like I was on the verge of my own personal enlightenment.

The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle

We spent several hours visiting The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle’s largest independent bookstore, which also has (of course) great coffee. Elliott Bay has a full roster of book signings and author readings, and a terrific blog. Here is what I bought there:

The Housekeeper and the Professor, by Yoko Ogawa

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong

Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel

Pearl Street Books & Gifts in Ellensburg, WA.

I wanted to see the high desert on the eastern side of the Cascades, so we drove to Ellensburg, WA, where we discovered the delightful Pearl Street Books & Gifts. Owner Michele Bradshaw is passionate about books and literature. She and I talked about our reading interests. Michele enjoys making recommendations, and it’s obvious she puts a lot of thought into creative, customer-responsive bookselling.

I liked the Magic Table, a display of enticing best-sellers and high quality fiction and nonfiction. Quality is apparent on every shelf and surface in the shop, where carefully chosen books are displayed cover side up. Michele has put together a number excellent book collections, including young adult, children’s, fiction, memoir/biography, and Pacific Northwest authors.

Pearl Street Books & Gifts also hosts 11 book clubs, a tea club, a knitting club, and yoga workouts.

While I was there, I bought:

The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America’s Deadliest Avalanche, by Gary Krist

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, by Timothy Egan

Booklust to Go, by Nancy Pearl

Queen Anne Books

Cover of Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott

I had a great time this spring walking the Pacific Crest Trail with Cheryl Strayed (who has just inspired Oprah Winfrey to revive her book club!), sailing the waters off British Columbia with M. Wylie Blanchet and her children, clearing forest trails with Ana Maria Spagna, and observing life through the eyes of the characters in Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.

In June: The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

“Today I shocked the lawyers, and it surprised me, the effect I could have on them.”

This is the opening line of The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan (first-time, best-selling novelist making her debut at age 57, wrote novels in secret for 25 years when the kids were at school), which I’ll be reading in June.

Highlights from the jacket copy: 1914. A bride on her honeymoon. Adrift on the Atlantic Ocean. Not enough to go around. A power struggle. Choosing sides.

Will you read it with me?

Quote from: The Lifeboat, Charlotte Rogan, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2012.

Going where time doesn’t exist with M. Wylie Blanchet

June 1, 2012July 24, 2015 Valorie Grace Hallinan2 Comments

“Her voice, forty years after her death, is timeless. In the end, I did not want to get off the boat, or let her go.” Timothy Egan, in his introduction to The Curve of Time: The Classic Memoir of a Woman and Her Children Who Explored the Coastal Waters of the Pacific Northwest, by M. Wylie Blanchet

If you want to read this treasure of a memoir you’ll have to do a bit of work. It’s out of print, so I ordered it from a used bookstore listed on Amazon. I love finding small packages on my doorstep from faraway bookstores. Blanchet and her five (FIVE!) children spent many summers on their 25-foot boat, the Caprice, exploring the British Columbia coast. This, after Blanchet’s husband had been lost at sea on the Caprice – only the boat was found.

Often, Blanchet followed the route of Captain Vancouver, who explored the waters in 1792. She read a copy of Vancouver’s diary to her children, and they tried to identify landmarks the sea captain had written about.

They followed no particular schedule except for being mindful of tides and weather, stopping when they pleased to explore little islands, hidden coves and beaches, and secluded inlets and bays that often didn’t show up on the map.

“We were very comfortable in the daytime with everything stowed away. The cockpit was covered, and had heavy canvas curtains that fastened down or could be rolled up. There was a folding table whose legs jammed tightly between the two bunks to steady it….We washed our dishes (one plate, one mug each) over the side of the boat; there was a little rope ladder that could be hung over the stern, and we used that when we went swimming.”

Her stories remind me of our many trips over the years rediscovering nature through the eyes of our children. This is the kind of book you’ll want to read aloud with children and grandchildren. Blanchet’s children were amazingly hardy and brave, often finding themselves with their intrepid mother doing things I couldn’t imagine doing with my children: crawling on a log suspended over rapids, exploring Native American burial grounds (in which bodies were “buried” dangling from trees in nets), making their way along a cliff in fog on a slippery, snowy mountaintop.

Few children today will have these kinds of adventures. Much of the wild, pristine country Blanchet wrote about in The Curve of Time has been developed. “I lighted a fire [on the beach] and piled it up with bark…We always carried a rack for broiling fish. Soon they were spluttering and browning over a perfect fire, which I raked over between two flat stones. We built it up with more driftwood…The Northern Lights were edging this way…and that way…across the northern sky – reaching above us – white and elusive, then retreating hurriedly down to the horizon.”

All photos were taken on Whidbey Island.

The quotes are from: The Curve of Time: The Classic Memoir of a Woman and Her Children Who Explored the Coastal Waters of the Pacific Northwest, M. Wylie Blanchet, Seal Press, Berkeley, CA, 1968.

__________________________________

Living on the edge of wilderness

May 29, 2012June 21, 2012 Valorie Grace HallinanLeave a comment

I’ve been keeping company with Ana Maria Spagna’s essay collections, Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw; and Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness while we’ve been vacationing in the Cascades.

After college, Spagna made a commitment to work on trail crews for the National Park Service in spring, summer, and fall, and to travel during the winter months. Eventually, she settled in Stehekin, Washington, a remote town in the northern Cascades, where she and her partner built their own house. I believe she still works the trail crews several months out of the year.

I tend to romanticize what it would be like to call such a place home. In her essays, Spagna captures the glamour and majesty of living surrounded by natural beauty, but she also writes about the never-ending challenges.

Ana Maria writes about how Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, tree huggers and loggers, religious fundamentalists and atheists get along (or don’t) in a small community.

There are the forest fires, flash floods, and avalanches. There are the costs incurred to keep residents of these areas safe from natural disasters, costs often borne by taxpayers who live in more populated areas.

It hadn’t occurred to me that precautions to prevent forest fires may cause the buildup of flammable, dense growth that could result in The Big One, a massive fire that destroys everything.

Spagna’s writing is important. She’s a voice from another world, the last bastions of nature, a voice whose wisdom we need to hear.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“I visited the Magic Kingdom thirty-seven times before I turned nineteen, and by then I craved something, anything, that would be the antithesis of Disney, the real thing. That’s what I found on the highway: places you can count on, places where in the morning without fail, there will be coffee at the gas station heading out of town….[and] people who….were honest, if quirky, and unexpectedly generous, and they lived an ethic that the land itself, no matter how pretty, can’t teach…..The Golden Rule.”

“These places…wilderness areas, national parks – are supposed to transform us, make us new…..they do not continuously dispense spiritual wowness like a fountain….I stripped myself of everything to be out there–out there!–and the problem with being out there is that then it is not out there anymore. It is more like in here….you can’t be made new at home.”

Quotes are from Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw, by Ana Maria Spagna, Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2004.

Please excuse my language (Blame it on Dear Sugar)

May 13, 2012July 2, 2012 Valorie Grace HallinanLeave a comment

Cheryl Strayed, author of the memoir Wild, is otherwise known as Sugar, the advice columnist for The Rumpus, an online culture and literary magazine.

Cheryl had been writing the column anonymously until this past Valentine’s Day, when she “came out” just as her newly published memoir was rising to the top of the bestseller list.

The Rumpus is a clever, intelligent magazine. I’m a bit too old for it, or it’s a bit young for me, so I’m not a regular reader, nor do I follow Cheryl’s advice column (which is not your ordinary, everyday kind of advice column). But somewhere along the line, I came across a piece of wisdom I liked that Cheryl gave to a struggling young writer who’d sent a letter to Dear Sugar.

This bit of wisdom went viral and the people over at The Rumpus decided to put it on a mug. I ordered the mug and it came in the mail yesterday.

I’ve read all kinds of books about creativity and writing to keep my own writing going and because I’m fascinated by the creative process. A couple of pages on this site are devoted to books about writing and creativity, and I’ll be featuring some of these on Books Can Save a Life as time goes by.

But sometimes just a short, pithy, to-the-point kick in the pants is all I need.

So I’ve got my new mug sitting on my writing desk, ready to be filled with coffee or tea on a moment’s notice.

I would say this is Cheryl’s approach to writing, to walking, to life.

Wild is to be made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon.

There is a fabulous interview with Cheryl over at Bookslut, but beware of spoilers. You may want to finish Wild first, before you read it.

Hey, is anyone reading Wild? If so, let us know what you think in the comments below.

I’m heading off to the land of Wild (the Pacific Northwest) later this week to attend a medical librarian conference with some of my colleagues (profoundly intelligent readers, all of them). Then some vacation time with family, where I’ll be reading other books with a Pacific Northwest theme, exploring Seattle (including The Elliott Bay Book Company), and the surrounding terrain. Watch for posts and pictures!

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: