Since not all the readers of my blog are necessarily also readers here on the group blog or my friends on Facebook, you may not know that I am currently in the process of growing a tiny human inside me. This comes after more than seven years of trying to get pregnant and nearly two emotionally taxing and occasionally very depressing years where every few months I went through time consuming, expensive and at times really rather painful IVF treatments. So I worked HARD for […]
Excellent use of research to enhance a story
The Boy Who Loved Too Much tells the story — and Latson does write it like a story, not a dry tome of science — of a boy named Eli with a genetic disorder called Williams syndrome. Described as the “anti-autism”, Williams syndrome breaks down social inhibition. Kids (and adults) like Eli are irrepressibly friendly, something that endears them to others but also worries their loved ones, since they go through life incredible vulnerable. Latson follows Eli and his mother Gayle over 3 years, describing […]
Sideshow Babies
I sort of stumbled across Miracle at Coney Island. I was browsing the Kindle Single options on my phone, looking for something short but not necessarily a popcorn read, and this was incredibly fascinating. I’d never heard of Couney, much like Prentice who discovered the incubator babies while researching another book, but he saved thousands of children over the course of a 40 year career. Should anyone need proof that a preemie could grow up to be just like any other member of society, Couney pointed to Hildegarde, […]
Tongue in Cheek Medical Info for Your Needs
While my work is in history, I love to read science non-fiction. I bounce around from Mary Roach books and other things in a similar vein, and about half of my podcast listening is science based as well. When reviews of James Hamblin’s If Our Bodies Could Talk started sliding in I thought it sounded up my alley. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that Hamblin did his own audio and added that to my queue list at the library. In If Our Bodies Could Talk […]