A to Z April - N: Nonfiction

For today's post I'm kind of lumping a bunch of different types of books together.  There are so many different types of nonfiction, or "true" books.  I'm going to choose a few of my favorites that I actually read and share them with you.


1.  I already shared probably my favorite with you, and that was biographies/memoirs.  You can go back and read my post on that HERE.

2.  My second favorite group would probably be science.  As a former science teacher, with my undergraduate degree in biology and earth science.  Some of my favorite science books you can see below, and you can tell I guess, that I'm a huge dinosaur freak.  And the last one I actually included with my biography post back on #1, but it is a lot of science, and I loved that.



3.  My 3rd favorite type of nonfiction is humor.  This can be memoirs again, I love a funny life story.  Or else lately there have been some books based on technology type things that I read and it just cracks me up!!  Here are a few of my favorites.
 

4.  History is another area that I sometimes find interesting.  I don't know that I've actually read that many history books, and a lot of them though, are often true crime types of books.  Here are the ones I remember reading.  The last one I'm still reading.  I have it on my iphone and whenever I go somewhere and don't happen to have anything to read, I can pull it up and read. 



5.  The final type of nonfiction I like to "read" are cookbooks.  I technically don't read them, just look for recipes I like and then make them.  If I have time.  And I also picked this because I got to listen to the author of the Hungry Girl cookbooks, and now diet last night, so I wanted to share that picture.  But first I'll share 3 cookbooks I have actually used.

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And here is a picture of Lisa Lillien, the "Hungry Girl" herself, speaking last night at the Barnes and Noble where I work part time.

So, how about you? Do you read much nonfiction?  If so, what type do you like to read?

A to Z April - Letter B: Biographies

Continuing with my book theme for this challenge, I've decided to share some biography/memoir type books.  Biographies of course are books about a person, sometimes written by themselves, then they are usually called autobiographies, or often they are now called memoirs.  Below is a list of my top 5 favorite biographies in no particular order.

The World's Strongest Librarian:

The Wilder Life:  My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:

Save Karyn:

Nerd Do Well:

Oooh, there is one more I read just recently that was really good, so I have to do a #6:

Last Night at the Viper Room:

So, 6 instead  of 5, but check them out if you want a good biography to read!  And again, while you're here, go enter my stop on the Fool for Books Giveaway Hop!

Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind by Gavin Edwards

Thanks to Edelweiss and It Books for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  Back in the day (late 80's, early 90's) I was a huge fan of River Phoenix.  I was one of the girls they talk about in this book that read about him in the teeny bopper magazines like Teen Beat.  Now, I was a very naive teenager, until his death, I had no idea he did drugs. Probably a lot came from his anti-drug messages that he gave in public to his fans.  But then I had no idea Corey Haim and Corey Feldman were using drugs either, and people tell me now just to think about how thin Haim was and that it was obvious.  Again, I plead naivete.
This book was a great biography.  Told in an almost story-like way, it really captured my attention from the start, and didn't let go till the very end.  It was like a walk down memory lane to read about all the stuff going on in Hollywood during that time.  But it was a peek at it through the eyes of an insider.  Hearing about what his childhood was actually like, learning what his family really was like, and the possible abusive conditions he spent his early life in, again, explained so much about his life.  And yet it wasn't just about him with every detail.  As the title says, it also was about the Hollywood both when he was around, and that was left after he was gone.  Learning about Johnny Depp, and musical stars like Flea and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, not to mention older stars, such as Dan Aykroyd, Sam Shepard, and Harriosn Ford, as well as famous directors like Gus Van Zant.  At times I almost felt like we were playing a game of Six Degrees of Separation, just to hear all the actors and actresses that he came in contact with at some point was amazing.  While I remembered all of his brothers and sisters, I'd forgotten that his sister Summer was married to Casey Affleck.  I remember when Joaquin Phoenix was going by Leaf Phoenix.  There was even a mention of Norman Reedus, Daryl on The Walking Dead!!
Of course the connection to Johnny Depp was not real deep, they knew each other from both being from Gainesville, Florida, as well as River hanging out at Depp's Viper Room Club.  But comparisons were drawn of their careers all through the book, and honestly, in a way there were so many similarities.  Both chose films that weren't necessarily ones that would make them big stars, they chose based on what they wanted to do.  Both had directors that they really respected and wanted to work with.  Also we followed Christian Slater, Ethan Hawke, and even Keanu Reeves through their careers as they moved along, and how River influenced them.  To know that Hawke respected River to the degree that he did.  And then, the career of Leonardo DiCaprio was discussed as it began and where it intersected.  I do think that Leo and River kind of have the same look, and even some of the same choices in what acting jobs they took, as well as their commitments to causes.  Some of DiCaprio's successes could even be somewhat considered to have come about because of River's death.  Movies that were supposedly for River, went to Leo after his death.
River is portrayed as very sensitive, yet you can tell insecure.  He was obviously very intelligent, yet as the book points out, due to his lack of normal schooling, not as knowledgeable as you would normally expect about common things. To read about his dogs and family, and other stories that I remember reading about in those teen magazines brought a smile to my face as I read.  Reading about the moments leading up to his death brought tears to my eyes.  As big of a fan as I was, I now realize, I really didn't actually see very many of his movies.  I know for sure I saw Explorers, Stand By Me, and the Indiana Jones movie he was in, and I think I saw A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon - but I may only think I did from seeing all the pictures of him in the teen magazines that were shots from the movie.  I'm now on a mission to see the movies I missed, and the final movie that he died during the last part of filming of, is now supposedly available, on YouTube no less.
My rating of the book on Goodreads was a 4 out of 5.  And I may bump that up to a 5 once I actually see the book.  What was missing from my e-galley was the pictures that I would hope are included in the final published copy.  When the books comes out this Tuesday (my birthday), I will be sure to check for pictures.  I will buy it for myself if it contains pictures, and will then go and up my rating.
I know many teens today have no idea who River Phoenix was other than Joaquin's older brother, but this would be a great book for them to read, as I said to learn about so many stars from back then, as well as those that are still around.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

I've been interested in this book since I first saw it at the bookstore.  I remember I started reading it one day when I was working at the cash register.  And it was a page turner!  I mean the story doesn't sound interesting, the way this author told it, or maybe just because of what the story is, it actually is very interesting.  There was a lot of science in it, but I feel the author did a very good job of explaining those things, which  makes sense because the family in the story didn't even really understand most of what was actually happening.  And that is probably part of what was so fascinating about the story.
Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman who found out she had cancer in the 1950's.  At that time there was still a lot of segregation.  In fact she had to go to the John Hopkins hospital because of her skin color.  The doctors took some of the cells from her cervix to see what they were, and of course they found that they were cancerous.  As doctors do, they kept some.  Soon one doctor, George Gey, discovered the unusual qualities of these cancer cells.  They grew and stayed alive outside the body.  Which up to that point, had been impossible in almost every single case they had tried.  The cells were named from the first two letters of the patient's first and last name, and so they became called HeLa.  HeLa cells are so well known in the science community, and for the longest time, no one knew who they came from.  You see, at that time, lots of research occurred without the patients ever knowing they were a part of it.  This is one of those cases.  The things that HeLa was used to help, creating a Polio vaccine, etc., the list is long and amazing.  Where these cells have been, the fact that they are still alive and growing more over 60 years after Henrietta's death, well that is only part of what was so intriguing about this story.
Henrietta and her family themselves are an interesting group.  The things they've suffered through, the things they've overcome, it was very worth reading.  The family had been left out of the loop, had no idea exactly what was going on.  When doctors came back to take blood samples from the rest of the family later on, the family assumed it was to see if they carried the cancer she had.  In fact, the daughter, Deborah, was so scared when she got close to the age when her mother died, that she even started calling trying to find out the results.  But that hadn't been what they'd taken the blood for.  And so of course, they didn't have those answers, and had no record of any test results for the family.  Later on they even had a con artist say he was trying to help them get what they deserved.  This family without much education heard things from him about how their mother's cells had been cloned, or combined with plant cells, or animal cells, and they thought there were actual clones of her walking around, or hybrid creatures that meant Henrietta must be suffering.
So when the author of this book, Rebecca Skloot, tried to get in touch with Deborah, and other members of the family, she had a really hard time getting them to trust her enough to even talk to her.  And even then, one small thing could set them off and make them again lose trust and decide not to talk to her anymore.  The journey of this family, Henrietta's cells, and the author to find and share this story is one worth reading.  I read this while on vacation, and it didn't feel like I was reading something for school, it was like reading a fascinating biography.
If you have any interest in science, or biographies, or even of  how medical issues have changed, this is a book that I think you'll find as intriguing as I did.