A Book List About Books (so meta)

"The Books They Gave Me: True Stories of Life,Love and Lit" by Jen Adams

This book is based off of a popular website called The Books They Gave Me. On the website (and the contents of the book) people send in short explanations of the books that they have been gifted by others and what they meant to the recipients. As I read the first couple of short essays (almost none of them are longer than a standard one sided book page) I was surprised by how much people read into books that they recover as gifts. There were several stories that had variety of the same themes: boy has an absolute favorite book that speaks to his dearest soul, gives a copy to his girlfriend,she reads it and feels no connection at all, realizes that maybe they aren't really supposed to be together.

Maybe I think it's putting a lot of stock into a present because I've never gotten a book as a present from a significant other. My husband now (a non-reader extraordinaire) knows better than to try to gift me a book but knows that a gift certificate to Half Price Books are always welcome. For me personally I think that the books you own are very indicative of who and what you are. When you read a persons book spines you get a little bit in their soul. But I'm just a book romantic.

I liked this book, the short little essays make for an easy and no pressure read. I feel like a fair amount of them were sad but there were some happy uplifting ones too. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Oddly enough I think this book would be a great present for the book lover in your life.

"The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasures of a Good Book" by Wendy Welch

A middle aged couple hit a midlife crisis and decide to get out of the corporate rat race. They both have had a "some day" dream of opening a used book store but neither have any retail experience. (They are kind of vague on what they actually do. The Scottish born husband seems to be a singer/Scotland tour guide and interior decorator while she has a doctorate in some kind of language study thing? They pretty much are crunchy granola, cat people for sure...)

They stumble upon a rambling shabby Victorian house in a small town suffering from bled dry coal mines. They decide, well hell lets do this bookstore thing. And they do. They have no plan, almost no money and nearly no inventory. They eventually get the shop up and running and the book is filled with their struggles to run the store, stories about their customers and life in their small town.

I know this sounds bitter and petty and bitchy (bitetchy? there needs to be a word for that) but I'm a little bit irritated that they actually succeed. They had no plan AT ALL, and are like we'll let's just have a go at it. I guess that just annoys my sense of fair play. Also theres talk of their sex lives and random dalliances they have in the bookshop. TMI.I gave it a 2.5 out of 5 stars.The writing style wasn't my favorite, a little overly self righteous but I liked some of the stories about their interactions with others.

"You Guys Want to See a Dead Body?" A Book List About Meat Suits

(Supernatural joke...anybody? No? Okay....)


Guys. Guys. This is my 100th post. Hooray! Thanks for sticking with me, I really appreciate it. Here's to more :)


"Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach

I.loved.this.book. I feel like this book covers almost every topic that you can imagine: grave robbing, autopsies, guillotines, organ donations, willed bodies, Christs crucifixion , etc etc etc. I'm not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination but everything that was discussed was presented in an informative and entertaining way. I'll highlight a couple of things that I found interesting.

Autopsies were taboos in many places, some places they were illegal. Grave robbery became a gory and illegal way to make some macabre money. However you didn't have to be dead or a grave robber to benefit. In Rochester New York in 1831 a man was paid 37 and a half cents when he sold his sons amputated leg. (So much ick in one sentence).

Donated bodies are often used to save lives. Some tests just have better results when using an actual body and not a manufactured stand in. In the 60s (and a little bit today) real bodies are used as "crash test dummies" to make cars safer. For example, for every cadaver used to develop safer air bags 147 lives were saved. Before the collapsing steering column was invented, many people were impaled through the heart in a car accident. Cadaver testing helped with this development as well. Another interesting use of cadavers was trying to develop safer footwear for soldiers who disarm landmines.

I could go on and on about all the interesting stuff in this book. The fun writing style, wide variety of topics, and yet normal page count make this a great read. I give it a 4 out of 5 rating!

Feel free to go to Toys Ru Us and buy this

"Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales" by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson

Have you heard of The Body Farm? It's the only place of it's kind (at least in the United States). It's associated with the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and basically it's a acre of land where scientists and anthropologists and biologists and several other -gists study what happens to bodies as they decay. It's helped with countless criminal cases (especially in determining time of death of victims).

Bill Blass is the one who started it all. He starts his career as an anthropologists digging up Indian graves in the Dakotas (this was in the 60s where people didn't really view this as a problem). But people knew his expertise in being able to identify a body's sex/age/race just by looking at the bones, and he began to get calls from law enforcement officials looking for help with cases. Before him and a few others there really wasn't such a thing as a forensic anthropologist.

The book was interesting because it's not often that you get to see a whole field of science develop like this. When Bill was starting he probably could have never dreamed about where the field would be now. I give this book 2.5 out of 5 stars!