Read On ... Life Stories

I'd like to write a companion to this book for biography.

Thomas Ford just received its copy of Read On ... Life Stories by Rosalind Reisner, the sixth title in the Read On... readers' advisory series, the second title this year. This book which focuses on autobiography and memoir has the same look and feel as the other books in the series. It has five reading appeal sections: character, story, setting, language, and mood. In each of these sections there are between seven and sixteen lists of book titles arranged around a theme, such as food-related memoirs and personal accounts from authors tracking down their ancestors. I like the headings, such as "A Hard Day's Night: Life in the Music Business" and "Crooked Lives: People Behaving Badly." It should be easy to use these lists to make readers' advisory displays.

I am pleased because Read On ... Life Stories is the first nonfiction title in the expanding series. Reisner chose well in writing about life stories, which are currently very popular with readers. Scanning through her lists, I see that she has chosen to include both classic and recent titles, spanning the late 1980s to 2008. I recognized many of the titles, many of which should be in many library collections. (That's too many manys in one sentence.)

There is a single index to Read On ... Life Stories which includes authors, titles, and subjects. Find a book that you like and then turn to its list for new reading suggestions. It is so easy that it should not be locked in a reference collection. Put your copy in circulation.

Reisner, Rosalind. Read On ... Life Stories. Libraries Unlimited, 2009. ISBN 9781591587668

The Outermost House by Henry Beston

I have a new dream - to spend a year in the wild doing nothing but watching birds as the seasons turn. It's been done before, of course, but it appeals to me greatly, especially as described by Henry Beston in The Outermost House.

Henry Beston did not really intent to spend fall 1926 to fall 1927 in a two room house looking down on a Cape Cod beach facing the Atlantic Ocean. He had gone with the plan of staying two weeks, during which he would relax and write. He was so comfortable that he extended his stay several times before latching onto the idea of staying a year, observing tides, marshes, clouds, and birds, and writing about them all. It sounds like a dream job to me.

The book that resulted is a classic of nature writing. Readers may find Beston much more pleasant to read than Thoreau, as Beston has no grand statements to make against the modernization of society. He's mostly just having fun, even when he stands in the freezing rain or swats at sand fleas. He does, however, report on disturbing trends, like disappearing bird species and the oil spills that were fouling beaches even in 1927. He also is more social, going to town for groceries once a week and frequently meeting with the local coast guards.

Not many public libraries have The Outermost House any more. It is a good time to rediscover this classic and make it better known.

Beston, Henry. The Outermost House. Holt, 1992. ISBN 0805019669

Diego: Bigger Than Life by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, illustrated by David Diaz

A few weeks ago I saw I and I: Bob Marley, a biography for young readers written in verse by and thought that it was a novel idea to write a biography as a collection of first person poems. Now, looking at the new books shelf in the children's section of my library, I find Diego: Bigger Than Life by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, illustrated by David Diaz. Again, a biographer has used poetry written as though it was written by the subject himself. I wonder how many other books like this there are?

That Mexican mural artist Diego Rivera can be the subject of a children's book is a curious thing to me. When I was a kid, all of the biographies were innocent, admiring, and sanitized. In the stories, the subjects were all well-behaved men and women whose lives were good examples for youth. Times and books have changed. While Bernier-Grand generally seems to admire Rivera's work and intentions, she profiles him as somewhat obsessive, self-centered, neglectful of family, and unfaithful to his lovers. He starts art projects knowing that his sponsors will later reject them. Obviously, young readers are not intended to follow Rivera's lead. So, what's up? Why tell children about Diego Rivera?

At this point it would be helpful to be a trained educator with a well-practiced answer. I'm not. I am a librarian and a parent (with a daughter who is 21 but who once was little), and I like the book for several reasons. 1) It is honest. No child who reads this book can grow up thinking that Rivera was a wonderful person, only to have the truth revealed later. I think my era has a lot of distrust of our parents' generation because they read us books that proved not to be true. 2) It shows that someone with many faults can rise above them to accomplish much good along with the bad. 3) A book like Diego gives parents and educators a lot to discuss with children. There is lots of bad behavior in our society, which children see on television, in the movies, and in the neighborhoods around them. You can not shield children from what is going on all around them. This book can be a starting point for conversation. 4) The story is well told, and Diego is an interesting character. Read a good book and you want to find another.

Bernier-Grand, Carmen T. Diego: Bigger Than Life. Marshall Cavendish, 2009. ISBN 9780761453833

Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl

Ruth Reichl has written several food-related memoirs that include "Mim tales," humorous stories about her mother Miriam Reichl. Writing these after her mother's death, she has regretted that they presented only one side of Mim's character - one that her mother would not have liked. In rediscovering a box of her mother's papers, Ruth found a woman she did not really know - someone who understood well the troubles that she appeared not to see - a woman who needed something meaningful to do. Ruth writes about her relationship to this new woman in Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way.

Ruth assumed that deep down her mother wanted her daughter to follow her example. There had been direct statements to the contrary - warnings about marriage and careers - but Ruth did not take them seriously. In the unsent letters and scraps of paper that served as her mother's haphazard journal, she found her mother had been serious. Miriam had tasted the world of work briefly on several occasions only to have husbands (supported by the prevailing mood of the time) insist that the woman's place was in the home, where all the new time-saving appliances left little to do. She was clinically depressed. Miriam did not want her daughter to be an intelligent woman with nothing to do. Her gift to Ruth was presenting herself as someone not to become.

Not Becoming My Mother is a small and fascinating book about a woman who represents women of her age, women denied careers after World War II. Book groups should pounce on it.

Reighl, Ruth. Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way. Penguin Press, 2009. ISBN 9781594202162

As We Forgive, a Film by Laura Walters Hinson

Various experts estimate that at least 800,000 and maybe over a million people lost their lives in the chaotic weeks of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. No one in the country was untouched by tragedy, and the longing for justice is high. At one point the prison population of the small country grew to greater than 100,000, many suspected of genocide crimes. Keeping so many prisoners was a burden for Rwanda, which needed workers to rebuild the country. With the help of evangelical ministers and local village officials, the Rwandan government began releasing confessed murderers back into their villages and neighborhoods, where they are taking part in reconciliation councils. Some websites say 22,000 were released in 2003, 36,000 in 2005, and 68,000 in early 2008. No matter what the numbers, many survivors are unhappy and afraid to have the guilty among them.

As We Forgive focuses on two women who lost their families in the genocide and the two men who admitted committing the murders. One of the women embraces the process of reconciliation, saying that it is the only hope that her community and nation has. The other women is reticent, though she does agree to meet the former neighbor in a group conversation with a pastoral minister and community leaders.

In the process of discussions, the needs of both survivors and the guilty men are revealed. Mostly, the survivors need help harvesting crops, winnowing grains, and rebuilding houses, while the confessed need tasks to help them regain respect and self-respect. Agreements are reached to the pleasure of the local leaders who hope to eliminate longstanding prejudice between Tutsi and Hutu.

As We Forgive is an optimistic documentary that admits that it is rather daring to be so hopeful. Some brief scenes of the genocide are included, but the bulk of the film is set in the present. At 53 minutes, this thoughtful film is a convenient length for discussion groups who should find plenty of topics.

As We Believe. MPower Pictures, 2009.

Advice for the Reluctant Weeder

I have always enjoyed weeding library collections because they always look so much better after the work is done. Tattered volumes disappear and there is room to shelve more books. Even more important, out of date materials are gone. Some librarians (I have known some) really hate to part with books. "Just think how the author would feel to know they were being weeded!" Now that I am an author that sort of resonates, but I still realize that the work has to be done.

Diane J. Young now has an article in Library Journal to help the reluctant weeder. Click here.

Bone Sharps, Cowboys, And Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, and the Gilded Age of Paleontology

Today we think of paleontology as one of the fun sciences. Nearly everyone seems to like a good dinosaur discovery with its lively debate about what the bones reveal. We enjoy stories about the travels and work of modern dino-hounds, such as Paul Sereno, Sue Hendrickson, and Xu Xing. Paleontologists were not always held in such high regard. In fact, in the late nineteenth century, they were ridiculed for their crazy theories and their bitter rivalries. Jim Ottaviani and the artists of Big Time Attic tell about early paleontologists, who perhaps deserved some of their bad press, in the graphic novel Bone Sharps, Cowboys, And Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, and the Gilded Age of Paleontology.

The publisher of Bone Sharps, Cowboys, And Thunder Lizards labels it as "science/history," but Ottaviani says clearly in his afterward that it is historical fiction. Most of the characters are or were based on real people, but the author took artistic license with the story in the way movie producers do when they present true stories. Time lines are rearranged, quotes are given to other speakers, and people who never actually met meet. Ottaviani adds eleven pages of notes to let readers know what was fact and what was fiction in his story. It is a pretty clever way to teach history.

Being a graphic novel, you might think it could be read very quickly, but there is so much content in the pictures themselves. A reader must take some time looking at facial expressions and what is going on in the background. Not all of it made sense to me. I was grateful for the notes at the end.

The publisher G. T. Labs has a series of science history graphic novels. I am placing some more reserves to see what else I might learn.

Ottaviani, Jim and Big Time Attic. Bone Sharps, Cowboys, And Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, and the Gilded Age of Paleontology. G. T. Labs, 2005. ISBN 0966010663

Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago

Last Friday I was lucky enough to join other reference librarians from Zone 1 of the Metropolitan Library System for a tour of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. Susan Augustine, head of user services at the Ryerson Art Library was our guide, taking us behind the scenes to see the conservation lab, the pamphlet files, technical services, the stacks, and the archives.

I was impressed by the wealth of the collection. The Ryerson is the second largest art library in the country after the library at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Augustine said the collection of periodicals is outstanding, noting that nearly every title in The Avery Index to Architecture Periodicals is held by the Art Institute's library. About 1000 books are added per month, mostly on art or architecture. Most titles come automatically through approval plans, of which two plans are U.S. and ten others are foreign. Most of the library collection is not in English. While most of the acquisitions are current materials, there is also some retrospective purchasing, especially in photography and Southeast Asian art. Another distinction is that the library is a research institution, not a rare books library; the library does not acquire rare and historical items just to have them.

The primary mission of the Ryerson is to serve the curators, who have many privileges that other users do not. Curators influence the acquisitions, get extensive reference help, and can visit most of the restricted areas of the library. They even get to check books out for a year and renew them annually. Augustine said that the curators do have to account for the books during the annual inventory, when library staff visit each department office to "see the books."

In recent years, service to other users has expanded from researchers and museum members to the general public. Unfortunately, the economic downturn has struck the library, which has reduced its public service staff greatly. The library is now open to the public during museum hours on Thursday and by appointment for limited hours on Wednesday and Friday.

As a librarian, it was fun to see the library's pamphlet file still exists. The Ryerson collection pamphlet file has everything from clippings and articles to letters from artists and promotional publications for gallery shows. Augustine said that for obscure artists, the pamphlet file sometimes has the only information that can be found. This valuable resource is in a locked room, protected for the ages.

Upstairs from the library reading room, accessible only by private elevators, we saw workrooms for the Art Institute's archives. The museum is accepting a limited number of collections from artists and architects with Chicago connections. Also, the museum has a second archives dealing with its own history. Both of these archives departments are up to their necks in documents and unusual items, including woodcut blocks, wine bottles, and posters. Only a patient person not troubled by piles of papers could work for such a service!

Our hour and a half passed quickly. My concern is that the library somehow ride out its funding shortfall and then restore more public services. It would be a shame to have such a great collection closed to the many people who would enjoy using it.

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith

I've read and reviewed many McCall Smith books, most of which have been mysteries. I am always charmed by them. How can he produced three or four books per year? I sometimes get behind in my reading. Spurred by seeing Botswana: In The Footsteps of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective with Alexander McCall Smith, I've finally gotten to Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, the tenth book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Series.

First, a few words about Botswana: In The Footsteps of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective with Alexander McCall Smith, a 54-minute documentary that looks at the setting for the author's most successful mystery series. Botswana is a place of beautiful light, both literally and figuratively. There is sunshine most of the year, making it a great place to travel to see striking landscapes and great wildlife. McCall Smith, however, focuses on the people, who are struggling to join the modern world and mostly succeeding. The author shows us children, teachers, waitresses, bankers, diamond mine workers, conservationists, and other people, black and white, who live in the cities and villages of Botswana - just the people who populate his books. He hopes that they can be guides for the development of all of Africa.

In Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, Mma Ramotswe has a new kind of mystery to solve: why does the local football team keep losing games? The owner suspects a traitor on the team. Here is how the owner presents the situation:

"This problem," he went on, "hurts me here. Right here - in my heart."

Mma Ramotswe inclined her head gravely. Everybody who consulted her was, in their way, hurting - even this rich man with his big Mercedes-Benz and his expensive cuff-links. Human hurt was like lightning; it did not choose its targets, but struck, with rough equality and little regard to position, achievement, or moral desert.

Mma knows very little about football and has to turn to her stepson for help. To complicate matters, her beloved white van fails her, and Mma Makutsi worries that her fiancee is about to be stolen by her arch enemy Violet Sephotho. With grace and patience, she resolves all the problems.

Libraries have to have McCall Smith books, and I have to read them all.

McCall Smith, Alexander. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. Pantheon Books, 2009. ISBN 9780375424496

Biographies for Younger Readers

Uma and Dana in the Youth Services Department have been buying lots of interesting books lately. Here are three biographies that I enjoyed.

You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax? by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Andre Carrilho. Random House, 2009. ISBN 9780375837388

Sandy Koufax has never really been forgotten by any baseball fan over 50 years of age, old enough to remember actually seeing the Dodger play. Jonah Winter aims to tell the latest generation about the player with the blazing fastball, who stunned the sports world by retiring early to keep from further hurting his arm. The quickly-told story with cartoonish characters serves as a cautionary tale as well as a tribute. The tilt-it-and-he-pitches book cover works best if you look at it with only one eye.


I and I: Bob Marley by Tony Medina, illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson. Lee & Low Books, 2009. ISBN 9781600602573

Biographies are not often written in verse. Tony Medina recounts the short life of the Jamaican singer Bob Marley in sixteen poems, accompanied by what look to me like tempera paintings (but with great ability to mix the colors). The poems give the reader a sense of the life without detailed narrative, and the illustrations establish a mood. Medina follows the poems with detailed explanatory notes from which the curious reader can learn the specifics of Marley's life. Medina's emphasis is that Marley's life was not tragic - that the singer's music still lives.


Amelia Earhart: The Legend of the Lost Aviator by Shelley Tanaka, illustrated by David Craig. Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2008. ISBN 9780810970953

Recognizing courage and furthering the belief that women can do anything are author Shelley Tanaka's aims in telling the story of Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in the Pacific Ocean in 1937, just a few days short of finishing her around-the-world-at-the-equator quest. Tanaka tells how Earhart had succeeded against great odds before; her failure was difficult for her fans to accept. In addition to getting an engaging biography, readers young and old learn how dangerous aviation was before modern communication and navigation systems.

Audiobook on My iPod: Quick Reviews

During our vacation in Australia and New Zealand and since we got home, I listened to several audiobooks on my iPod. Here are some quick reviews, five stars being the best.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - five stars

Gaiman is a great reader and the story is very inventive. I loved all the ghosts and enjoyed the dramatic tension. It made me wish I could walk around unseen. This book, which deserves all its awards, is great in audio, too.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - three stars

Perhaps I expected too much after all the praise that I've heard. I had to listen to the first couple of chapters a second time to understand what was happening. Once I got into it, I listened faithfully, but when it was over, I started seeing problems with the story and its characters. I feel that despite her humanizing faults, the Lisbeth Salander character is just a superhero, the ultimate hacker who can get any bit of data from any computer without fail. All the women fall for Mikail Blomkvist too easily. In the end, the all powerful bad guy seems pretty clueless. I don't buy it.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - four stars, maybe four and a half

I can see why there is still a long list of reserves at our library. This is a charming story. I liked the many characters and enjoyed learning all the history about the Channel Isles during World War II. It ended just like I wanted. Perhaps I am starting to want gentle reads. If they are as good as this, that's fine with me. Having five readers for the various characters was a nice touch.

This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson

Having been one of the librarians interviewed for this book, I was eager to read it. I was hoping to like it and was not disappointed.

In a time of economic stress, when librarians are needed more than ever, yet library budgets are being cut, Marilyn Johnson speaks out in our behalf in her forthcoming book This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. Her message to anyone who will listen is that librarians are the "authors of opportunity." She sums up her assessment of librarians near the end of the book thus:

It didn't matter who I was, or what I did, or where I paid taxes, or how long I stayed. I'm sure it didn't matter if the book had RFID tags or a checkout card with a ladder of scrawled names, though tags were neat. I knew the librarians would help me figure out anything I need to know ...

I was under the librarians' protection. Civil Servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or, in this case, guardians of my peace.

While Johnson extols the virtues of the profession, she points out that it has some members that resist change, usually trying to preserve services and procedures that served well in the past. She also repeats the often heard cry that librarians fail to promote themselves well in our highly contentious world. Her praises, however, greatly overshadow her criticisms. She believes that most librarians knock themselves out serving their clients regardless of pay, institutional support, or appreciation from society at large.

In Johnson's previous book Dead Beat, she attended professional conferences and interviewed leading obituary writers. She immersed herself in the obit world, visiting newspapers and archives in many places. In This Book Is Overdue, she takes a similar approach. She attended the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington in 2007 and select regional conferences, and she visited libraries across the country to learn how they were changing. She even went to Italy to attend the graduation of St. John's University library program for students from developing nations. A look at the Acknowledgments in the back of the book verifies that she met a great variety of librarians during her research.

My favorite chapters tell about the Connecticut Four filing a legal challenge to the national security letter that was issued to their library under the U.S. Patriot Act and about the St. John's University program for international students mentioned above. I also enjoyed the stories about the relationships between librarians and IT staff, about blogging librarians, about Radical Reference providing information to protesters in Minneapolis/St. Paul, about librarians in Second Life, about services to authors at New York Public Library, and about the opening of the new Darien (Connecticut) Library.

Having been one of the librarians interviewed for this book, I was eager to read it. I was hoping to like it and was not disappointed. I enjoyed reading about people I know and subjects about which I have firm opinions, even when I do not totally agree with Johnson. An outside opinion is good to have. She is always fair and reports multiple sides of issues. Many librarians will want to read this long anticipated book which publishes in February 2010.

Johnson, Marilyn. This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. HarperCollins, February 2010. ISBN 9780061431609

Munyurangabo, film by Lee Isaac Chung

At this point, much has been written about the genocide in Rwanda, yet it is hard for outsiders to imagine and understand. With the bloodbath past, we hope that progress toward peace and reconciliation is being made, and we turn our attention elsewhere. Perhaps there is progress. How else could a film like Munyurangabo be made.?

The story of the film is almost as good as the story in the film. Lee Isaac Chung, a Korean American filmmaker, taught cinema and photography in Rwanda to street kids with the result that they became cast and crew of his film, the first ever in the Kinyarwanda language, a language the director does not speak. The principle actors were boys from the ghetto who worked as porters in the Kigali market. One was a genocide orphan; the other thought he was until after the film was made and his father was located in Uganda. Just think, over ten years after the genocide people are still finding each other. The film was shown in festivals around the world.

Munyurangabo itself is pretty stark. Though it shows Rwanda to be a beautiful country with rolling hills and bright green banana plants, it reveals how impoverish the people are. They are also still leery of strangers and question whether they are Hutus or Tutsis. Many still feel bound to seek revenge in the name of their slain relatives. Others long for peace, even if for "just one more night at home." The dramatic tension lasts to the very end.

Chung artfully brought Rwandan dance, music, and poetry into his beautifully composed film. It is hard to believe Munyurangabo was his first feature length film. I hope for more to come.

Munyurangabo. The Film Movement, 2009. 97 minutes. ISBN 9781440746451

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

You do not survive genocide without a little help at critical moments from people who are supposed to be your enemies. Likewise, you do not build a better world without in turn serving people who are supposed to be your enemies. Thus you might sum up the life of Deogratias, a medical student and Tutsi from Burundi who fled his country in 1994. Tracy Kidder tells Deo's story in Strength in What Remains.

Kidder divides his book into two parts. The first describes Deo's childhood, flight from Burundi, and time of homelessness in New York City. In each of these periods in his life, Deo could easily have died without the help of strangers. The most dangerous time, of course, was the half a year that he spent hiding in the jungle and refugee camps of Rwanda and Burundi, but living in abandoned buildings of New York with the gangs in open warfare in the streets below may have distressed him more. America was supposed to be paradise. He found living in Central Park more to his liking.

The second part is about Kidder getting to know Deo, who is by this time a graduate of Columbia University and a medical student at Dartmouth University. Deo has gone through stages in which he wants to tell his story to all the world but then he wants to block any painful memoirs. Despite many warnings, he begins to take trips back to his homeland with the goal of building a free medical clinic. Kidder later accompanies Deo to places that are still quite dangerous.

Strength in What Remains continues Kidder's efforts to write about remarkable people addressing the world's seemingly insurmountable problems. His picture of Deo is admiring without canonizing the young immigrant, who at times seems reckless and vacillates between optimism and depression. For readers who may not even remember Burundi's long war, the book is a reminder that American media has a very short attention span outside our borders unless American military forces are involved. Strength in What Remains is compelling reading.

Kidder, Tracy. Strength in What Remains. Random House, 2009. ISBN 9781400066216

Extra thoughts:

This passage on page 144 about the city of Bujumbura jumped out at me:

... "I don't know anything about coffee," said Deo. The little library he liked was still open. Deo spent the better part of a week there, reading about coffee beans.

Through months of violence and disorder, someone kept a public library together and open. Deo later spends much time in the New York Public Library and the libraries at Columbia and Dartmouth universities.

Flower from the Botanic Garden in Christchurch: New Zealand Photos Loaded on Flickr

Botanic Garden in Christchurch
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

It has taken almost a month, but I now have all of our New Zealand photos worth seeing posted on Flickr. The set includes our visits to Christchurch and Queenstown, a walk on a glacier, visits to Lord of the Rings sites, a visit to a farm, and lots of mountains. Some of the prettiest are from the Botanic Garden in Christchurch, where it was early spring. I'd enjoy spending a year in Christchurch just to watch the gardens. I recommend viewing the set as a slideshow.

There are more New Zealand pictures in two other sets. Milford Sound shows our boat trip through the fjord to the Tasman Sea. This includes lots of waterfalls, snowpeaked mountains, and seal pups. The other set shows our trip across the island and over the Southern Alps on the TranzAlpine Railroad.

Free Medical Journals and Free Books 4 Doctors!

In the summer, I saw a note about Free Medical Journals. This website provides readers access to the text of articles in 1392 medical journals (as of October 28, 2009). In many cases, the latest issues are not free. Both JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine offer their articles after six months, while BMJ (British Medical Journal) holds the texts for three years. The Canadian Medical Association Journal is free immediately. Readers may be somewhat frustrated by not being to get many of the articles as they are reported in the news, but at least, libraries who have had to drop medical periodicals for balancing budgets do have some recourse if fulltext is not in their subscription databases.

Organization and searching seems to be just by topic of journal as a whole. Users need to know medical terms to get good results, though searching "blood" does get "hematology."

What I did not know before is that there is also Free Books 4 Doctors! Despite the page title, it appears that anyone (not just doctors) can read from 365 medical texts. 38 of the titles are in Spanish. Other languages are also included, even Mongolian. Strangely, one of the books is a novel, Murder in Casteddu by Mary Miller.

The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie

Readers who see shelves filled with Agatha Christie mystery novels may not realize that she also wrote 157 short stories. Most were published first in newspapers or magazines and then republished in story collections. In the appendix of The Duchess of Death: The Unauthorized Biography of Agatha Christie, biographer Richard Hack includes a complete list of these stories and identifies the collections in which readers may find them.

I just finished the light and entertaining collection The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie, which features the astute and impeccably dressed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In this collection first published in 1948, Poirot is thinking of retiring and has decided to take only twelve more cases. To make things more interesting, he has decided the cases must somehow reflect the twelve labors of the Greek hero Hercules. He applies his little gray cells to solve unusual mysteries, most of which do not involve murder. Once he sees the truth of each matter, he moves quickly to broker settlements, often without calling in the police.

Though the stories take the reader around the globe, they mostly address the English way of life. Take the following paragraph as an example:

For John Hammett was particularly dear to the people and Press of England. He represented every quality which was dear to Englishmen. People said of him: "One does feel that Hammett's honest." Anecdotes were told of his simple home life, of his fondness for gardening. Corresponding to Baldwin's pipe and Chamberlain's umbrella, there was Hammett's raincoat. He always carried it - a weather-worn garment. It stood as a symbol - of the English climate, of the prudent forethought of the English race, of their attachment to old possessions. Moreover, in his bluff British way, John Hammett was an orator. His speeches, quietly and earnestly delivered, contained those simple sentimental cliches which are so deeply rooted in the English heart. Foreigners sometimes criticize them as being both hypocritical and unbearably noble. John Hammett did not mind in the least being noble - in a sporting, public school, deprecating fashion.

Of course, the former prime minister thus described proves to be a crook. Nothing is really simple in Agatha Christie mysteries.

Many of the British television adaptations of Christie mysteries are drawn from the short stories. Readers shouldn't forget them.

Christie, Agatha. The Labours of Hercules. Dodd, Mead & Company, 1967. No ISBN.