Review: Without a Word: How a Boy's Unspoken Love Changed Everything

Title:  Without a Word:  How a Boy's Unspoken Love Changed Everything

Author:  Jill Kelly

Genre:  Memoir/Christian Biography (September 2010)

About:  Football star Jim Kelly and his wife Jill find out their infant son has a rare, fatal illness and is expected to survive for only 14 months. This is the story of how Hunter Kelly, who succumbed to Krabbe Leukodystrophy at the age of 8, changed their lives forever.

Thoughts:  Absolutely loved this story. Jilly Kelly does a fabulous job of opening her heart, her life, her marriage, her struggles, and her reality to readers. Several pages of pictures are included, which is always my favorite part. I'm a visual person, so to be able to read the story and see the pictures made it all the more heartbreaking and inspirational. The book is faith-based, and I enjoyed reading about Jim Kelly's transformation from philanderer to faithful servant.

Source:  Library

Why I Chose:  This was everything I love in a book all wrapped in one - medical-related, sad but inspirational, lots of pictures, memoir, sports.

Recommend?  Yes, definitely.

Rating: 5/5

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Review: "I" The Creation of a Serial Killer

by Jack Olsen
Biography (2002)

My Synopsis

Biography about truck driver Keith Jespersen, a husband and father, who killed eight women in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s, early 1990s.

My Thoughts


I had read his daughter's book called Shattered Silence and it was okay, not that interesting. I gave it 3 stars. This book was better, I guess because of the detailed murders. The man was nuts (obviously) and it floored me how easy it was for him to kill the women and get rid of them. He met them mostly at truck stops, invited them for a bite to eat, brought them into his truck cab for sex, and when something they did or said made him mad, he killed them and dumped them. He didn't even bury the bodies, just dragged them to the side of the road a little bit and covered them with some brush. He killed the women by pushing down on their throats with his fist, suffocating them.


It was strange because he had children and had never hurt them or his wife (ex- at the time of the murders), but he did abuse animals. The stories about the animal abuse bothered me as much as the murders.


That's all you need to know. It was pretty gruesome and bizarre, and scary to know that there are people out there like that.


Do I Recommend?


Yes, if you like stories like this. It was well written and interesting.


Source


Library

My Rating

4/5

Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

by Rebecca Skloot (February 2010)
Non-fiction / Biography / Science

My Synopsis

Henrietta Lacks, a black woman in the 1950s was diagnosed with cervical cancer.  Without her knowledge, during her treatment with radiation, doctors at Johns Hopkins removed cancerous cells from her tumors and kept them for research.  Her cells were unusual because they could be cultured and quickly reproduced, which was invaluable to cancer research, polio, cloning, in vitro fertilization, the eventual discovery of extra chromosome 21 of Down syndrome patients, as well as the effects of steroids, hormones, and vitamins.  Doctors began selling the cells to researchers around the world, turning it into a multibillion-dollar business. Twenty-five years later, the family found out by mere coincidence that the well known HeLa cells, as they are called, were used in such a way, without consent or compensation, and are still in use today.

My Thoughts

Who would have thought that a book about the removal of a woman's cancer cells would be so interesting.  Oh but it was!  I loved this book.  Rebecca Skloot is talented.  At first I thought who cares if someone took cells from someone's body and used it to help millions of people around the world?  That would be a good thing, right?  But that's when it got interesting, because Skloot showed the ethical and racial issues that were involved and it just sucked me right in.

It was the 1950s, and because of where science and medicine was at that point, and because Henrietta was black, she received substandard care for her cancer.  But she placed her trust in the doctors because she had no choice; she had a husband and five children at home to care for.  One of those children, Elsie, was placed in the Home for the Negro Insane.  (Skloot tells of Elsie's deplorable story as well.)  Despite treatment, Henrietta died at age 31 from uremia, a complication from the cancer that took over her body.

The author first heard Henrietta's story as a 16-year-old high school student and then again 11 years later after reading a scientific paper titled "The HeLa Cancer Control Symposium."   She called the author of that paper and asked if he would put her in touch with the family.  At first they didn't want to speak about their mother or her cells, but she persisted.  After a year of unreturned messages, Skloot eventually gained the trust of Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who because of her own curiosity, agreed to provide information for the book.

Skloot did a beautiful job of moving between the scientific and human parts of the story.  I came to know each family member and how they felt about their mother and her cells, and what they were going through in their own lives.  Despite the huge financial success of their mother's cell business, each member of the Lacks family was uninsured and struggled through health and financial issues.

Although the HIPAA law has since been created to protect privacy, and guidelines (which aren't laws) are now in place regarding informed consent, the question of tissue and cell ownership remains. Any time you have an appendectomy, tonsillectomy, routine blood test or mole removed, doctors, hospitals and labs keep it. And store it.  Forever.  Kind of weird, huh?

Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks

Do I Recommend?

Absolutely. 

Source

Library

My Rating

5/5

Other reviews

Fizzy Thoughts
Linus's Blanket
J. Kaye's Book Blog
Sophisticated Dorkiness




What about you? Have you read this or do you plan to?

Review: Undaunted Courage

Undaunted Courage

by Stephen Ambrose


My Synopsis

A biography about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

My Thoughts

An amazing, well-researched book that was informative but not so technical that it was difficult to read. Surprisingly, I got into this book! Ambrose wrote in a way that I felt I was with these courageous explorers as they encountered Indians - some friendly, some not - dealt with illness, mosquitoes, and bears, how they hunted for food, built canoes, rode rapids and walked miles in the snow. He was extremely thorough in his research; he spent months traveling the same trails and viewing the same sights mentioned in their journals. He does a great job of detailing the relationship between Meriwether Lewis and President Thomas Jefferson and at the end of the book included Lewis's mental illness and suicide. After the expedition, Lewis's mental illness prevented him from publishing his journals and sadly he died before doing so. Because of this, Lewis and Clark never got credit for most of their discoveries. A man named Nicholas Biddle published a book called The History of the Expedition Under the Commands of Captains Lewis and Clark, which was a narrative and paraphrase of the journals.

Awesome, awesome book. Everyone should read this. It's one of those books where you need to set time aside since it's not an easy read, but when you do put the time into it, it's really worth it.
Stephen Ambrose wrote another book called D-Day and I plan on reading that as well.

Thanks to Amos for recommending this book!

My Rating

5/5 but not because I couldn't put it down, as my rating system says, but because it was both interesting to read and I learned so much.