By DONNA HINE
Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis’s “Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life’s Darkest Hours” (371.7 ROI) is a difficult book to read. Written by the teacher whose room would have been next in the rampage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, it details the horrific experience in a personal and terrifying way. As you read, you, too, have crammed 20 first-graders into a one-stall bathroom and pulled a file cabinet in front of the door so the killer won’t find them. You hear the pleas for life and the resulting gunshots of those just outside your door. You are not sure if you are really alive or this is an alternate universe. You are terrified.
Next, Tom Farley, M.D. has written a fascinating true account of the public health initiative of New York City under Michael Bloomberg. “Saving Gotham: A Billionaire Mayor, Activist Doctors, and the Fight for Eight Million Lives” (610.9 FAR) is a behind-the-scenes look at how they imposed strict regulations to save peoples’ lives – whether the people wanted it or not. They prohibited smoking in bars, outlawed trans fats in restaurants, reduced the amount of salt allowed in foods, brought attention to sugary drinks and generally forced the public to be responsible for better health. Millions of people became healthier despite themselves.
“Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose” (610.1082 VER) by Melanne Verveer and Kim K. Azzarelli shows women how to lead a successful as well as a meaningful life. Interviews of many well-known women who explain how they were able to accomplish this goal include notables such as Geena Davis and Diane von Furstenberg. The foreword written by Hillary Rodham Clinton is particularly interesting as one of the authors spent many years with Clinton as an activist for promoting the potential of women.
In her latest book, Bonnie MacBird imagines she discovers an unknown work of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in an old book about cocaine use. “Art in the Blood” (MAC) follows our favorite detective in a new adventure to Paris, where he connects the threads of three separate crimes as one. Written in Watson’s voice (as Doyle did), MacBird’s narrative hopefully will be as engaging as the original!
Short story fiction can be a terrific alternative when life becomes too busy. Pick it up and finish one entire story in only 30 pages – or even just two pages! A quirky book of short stories, “Mothers, Tell Your Daughters’ (CAM) by Bonne Jo Campbell celebrates strong but flawed women. In one story, an abused wife takes revenge on her bed-ridden husband. In another, a newlywed is sure her recently adopted mutt is actually her dead ex-boyfriend, so she struggles with the idea of having him neutered.
Middlebury Public Library Adult Services Librarian Donna Hine writes Library Lines. If you have a topic you’d like her to cover, contact her at the library at 203-758-2634.
