Connie's May Picks

• The Spirit Catches you and you fall down
  By Anne Fadiman
  
• Play to the End
  By Robert Goddard
• In the Woods
  By Tana French
• The Professor and the Madman
  By Simon Winchester
• The Other Boleyn Girl
  By Philippa Gregory
  

My usual favorite books are nonfiction and it seems that one book leads to another on a particular subject or author. This can easily overlap from nonfiction to reading a fiction book (or two or three) on the same subject. Such was the case of English history in the time of King Henry VIII… I went back and forth between nonfiction writers such as Alison Weir and fiction writers such as Philippa Gregory.


I read The Spirit Catches you and you Fall Down many years ago and it has remained my favorite book since then. It is the story of a Hmong family with a child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. The medical staff in Merced and her family both want what is best for Lia but cultural and language differences combine to make this difficult to accomplish. Fadiman explores the Hmong culture and ours with empathy and it is a book that makes you think deep and hard about respect and understanding. It won several book awards and is now required reading in many medical schools.


Then there is Erik Larsen whose nonfiction books cover true crime and the Chicago World’s Fair in The Devil and the White City, Gun Violence in Lethal Passage in which he follows the “life” of a weapon used by a teenager who shot several rounds of ammunition at his Virginia high school, in Isaac’s Storm he explores how the seaside town of Galveston, Texas was ravished by a hurricane that killed over six thousand people and why.. he includes the politics surrounding the delayed reports of the storms arrival as well as the science of hurricanes and the devastating effects the storm had on the area. His books are varied and always interesting and well written.


Simon Winchester is another favorite author who has several, varied nonfiction titles. The first I read was The Devil and the Madman about the writing of the Oxford English dictionary. The title gives you an idea of what the book is going to reveal, never the less Simon Winchester makes you want to read every word. He also has written about the annihilation of Krakatoa in 1883 the volcano set off a tsunami that reportedly killed 35 thousand people. Check out his other books as he has written on varied topics.
I do like to read stand alone mysteries … no series for me. Lately I have enjoyed Play to the End by Robert Goddard and In The Woods by Tana French, both books are suspenseful, well written page turners.