Reading To Daddy

Happy Fathers Day!!!! (I know it was yesterday, but still...)  My daddy has always encouraged his kids love of reading, often setting the example by always having a book in his hand.  When I was around 10ish Daddy went back to school to become a Physician's Assistant, or a PA.  This of course required TONS of studying and reading.  Living in Seattle at the time also meant a lot of traffic to and from various places.  One day Daddy came in and saw me flipping through one of his medical
text books and asked if I could read it, turns out not only could I pronounce the insanely weird words, but I actually enjoyed it!  For the next four years I would go places with him and read aloud from his books as we drove, I would quiz him, asked way more questions than he probably thought possible and generally formed a bond over my new found passion in the medical field.  Our learning and reading things related to our profession endures to this day, with us sending each other articles and case studies that we thing the other would find interesting or discussing a difficult patient or call.  I am eternally grateful to my Daddy for including me in his quest for education, for not being to big of a man to let his little girl read to him, and for just always being there as an amazing daddy!  Happy Reading Everybody!

Healing Magic

I have been looking for some new series to get into as I have thoroughly exhausted my regulars, so I have been scouring the bookshelves for something new to try.  Mercedes Lackey is an author I enjoy, and she has about 1000 different series for me to choose from, so I picked up The Serpent's Shadow, the first in the Elemental Masters series.  I LOVED IT!  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Maya Witherspoon is the daughter of an English military doctor and a high caste Brahmin.  Maya grew up in India, learning the art of healing from her father, finishing school and becoming a doctor in her own right.  From her mother, Maya learned to believe in magic, watching her mother who was a powerful magic user.  Maya herself has magic, but according to her mother it is not the magic of her people, but rather her fathers and to learn it she must go seek out others who use her kind of magic.  After the untimely death of her parents Maya and her household flee to London to avoid the same fate.  Maya gets sets up a practice in her own house, catering mostly to the poor, the theatre workers, the "kept"women, and anybody else in need of a discreet physician who does not mind if she is female.  Maya also works in the charity hospital a few times a week for free.  Maya is lucky enough to have received a substantial inheritance from her parents, allowing her to own a house modified to her own purposes, including a conservatory filled with tropical flowers and the home to several exotic animals.   The animals were another gift from her mother and consist of two

mongooses, a small monkey, a parrot, a peacock, a hawk, and an owl, all who are much more then they seem. Maya along with her friend Ameilia (who is training to be a physician) work against the ingrained sexism to help as many as they can.  Maya has an extra weapon to help her with her healing, she is able to access the magic of the earth to assist her in her physiking.  Maya's use of magic triggers the interest of the White Lodge, a group of men who are considered Elemental Masters, essentially people who have a magical affinity for one of the four elements, Water, Air, Fire or Earth and have mastered the use of it.  There is some controversy as the Lodge has no Earth masters, as almost all the Earth masters are female or lower class and God forbid they allow either of those into their vaunted club.  Peter Scott, a Water Master is one of the rare non upper class magic users allowed in the Lodge and he is tasked with finding out about Maya.  He meets Maya and the two get along well, with Peter offering to teach Maya as much as he can and then finding her an Earth Master to finishing her tutelage.  Meanwhile, Maya discovers her mothers sister Shivani is the one who is intent on killing Maya.  She is intent on this because of the fact that Maya's mother married an English man and gave birth to a "half-breed" daughter.  Maya, Peter, the pets, and a few others band together to defeat the evil through the combination of their various magics and the help of some of the Indian gods and goddesses.  Peter and Maya marry, convince the Lodge to open up and they all live happily ever after until the next book.

I have to admit that I picked this series to start because the book was all yellow and teal and awesome.  I am glad I did 'cause I loved this book, and hopefully will love the rest of the series as well. What I loved the most about this book is that it centered on medicine, one of my passions is medicine (which is also what pays the bills, so that works out well for me) so any story that uses the medical profession in a fairly accurate manner makes me very happy.  I appreciated how the author combined the medicine and the magic together, not using magic as a way to totally skip over conventional medicine, but more of a way to augment what they were doing, getting bones to mend faster after they had been set, encouraging skin to heal after surgery, things like that.  I also really liked how Maya practiced medicine through out the whole book, not just until

Peter found her.  Too many books will really do a great job with whatever convention they are using to launch the story, but then it peters out as the "action" takes over.  This book had Maya working on patients until the very last page, in very interesting and fairly accurate ways.   I loved learning about India (which is one of my favorite countries, just for the sheer diversity of it) and of course now must research all of the various gods, goddesses and other various goodies I read about. I also liked that we got to see things from the "bad guys" perspective, we got to see the motivation of Shivani and why she was so intent on violence and murder.  I love it when this happens because for me it gives a much more plausible feel to the whole thing. One thing that was kind of cool, especially near the end is that you could see where the author payed homage to a few fairy tales, and Snow White in particular with the whole old woman with the poisoned apple bit, the seven small animals/companions, and even the kissing the dusky maiden awake thing (though that was for a reason, not just true love).  The few things I did not enjoy so much were pretty minor, I felt like the author was shoving the women's lib and racism down our throats, it got a bit heavy handed at times, but did not detract from the over all story so it was bearable. A few times I felt that the solution to some of the characters problems were a bit pat, or a bit over the top, but it was still fun.  The other thing that was a bit more of an issue was that the reader does not get a whole lot of info on how the Elemental Masters thing worked.  The focus was more on Maya and her unconventional combining of magics and techniques and her training was glossed over pretty quickly.  We see Peter use his Water Mastery a bit, but again no real insight into how it works.  I am hopeful later books will remedy this.  Overall the story flowed beautifully, the characters where fairly well fleshed out, the little extras that make a book special were all in there, and the cover was just awesome.  I give this book an 8 out of 10 shadow snakes.

How do you choose a new series? Do you love it as much as I do when a book accurately portrays your profession?  What is my deal with yellow covers?

A Tale of Two Women

Hello my lovely readers, how are you all this fine morning?  Have you been staying up until all hours watching the Olympics?  I may have been trading sleep for extra Olympic hours so if I seem a little loopy...well I'm always a little loopy so carry on.  So this rambling will be a bit different.  I am going to be combining two books into one big synopsis and rambling because I think they fit together to well and offer way to much comparative goodness to do separately, besides I would be constantly referring to the other book so this will be much easier...I think.  The books are two from my beloved Anne McCaffrey's Pern series.  Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern and the companion novelette Nerilka's Story.  I love both of these books for two very different reasons. The first book (which I shall refer to as Moreta) is one of Ms. McCaffery's signature Dragonrider tales, complete with many characters, various places and sweeping story.  The second book, (which is more of a novelette and will be referred to as Nerilka) is about the exact same event/story but told from a much smaller more personal view.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD

We start our story in the past...well the past compared to the first Dragonrider books...well just go with it.  Moreta is the current Weyrwoman of Fort Weyr and is stuck with Sh'gall a capable but humorless Weyrleader.  Moreta is on her way to the Ruathan Gather where she hopes to watch runner races, drink Benden white, and dance the night away in her new dress.  She and her queen dragon Orlith go and do just that with the added bonus of the company of Alessan, the new Lord Holder of Ruatha.  Alessan is a younger man, vigorous, wry and also an avid runnerbeast racer.  He is most known for the tragic death of his young bride Suriana, whom in a world where marriages are usually made for alliance was a rare one of love.  His wife was thrown from an untrained runnerbeast and broke her back, sending Alessan into a deep mourning.  He is finally recovering and is now trying to dodge the numerous attempts at the high-born daughters of his fellow Lord Holders to take her place.  As the races progress, a runnerbeast collapses and dies, apparently from an unknown respiratory illness.  While sad, the runner is cleared away and the Gather continues.  Moreta is meets Oklina, Alessans youngest sister who is in turn introduced to the bronze dragon rider
B'lerion.  After dancing the night away with Alessan, Moreta returns to her Weyr with her dragon who is near to clutching.  They do their duty and fight the menace Thread (which is explained in the start of every book), looking foward to it ending in the next eight turns and a chance at least 200 years of Thread free life to look forward to. Unfortunately a crimp is put into all the happiness when a plague brought up from the Southern Continent threatens all human and runnerbeast life on Pern.  We eventually find out that it is a flue like illness and its initial outbreak kills off a huge percentage of people who catch it.  Hardest hit are the two holds that held gathers, Ista and Ruatha, with Keroon being hard hit as it is an area known for its runnerbeast breeding.  Even worse is that the dragonriders start succumbing to this illness, causing riders to die and their dragons to go between, unable to live without their riders.  This is the biggest calamity possible as it inhibits the ability of the dragonriders to do their first duty which is to protect Pern from the deadly Thread, which is not kind enough to stop falling just because the whole world is sick and dying.  The healthy dragonriders decide to pool resources and miraculously discharge their duty. Eventually it is discovered that a vaccine can be made out of the blood of the people who have recovered from the disease, unfortunately the vaccine has to be given to every living person and runnerbeast on Pern before the next outbreak hits, or they will probably not survive the next wave.  Moreta, Alessan, Olkina, B'lerion, and the healers Capiam and Desdra use a technique called "timing" which is essentially a dragon ability to go between times as well as space.  This is incredibly dangerous and is discouraged for the most part.  They use timing to go to a remote island in the future to gather supplies enough to inoculate all of Pern.  As they do this Moreta and Alessan finally give in to the intense attraction they had been feeling, as do the rest of the party (insert eyebrow waggle here).  They decide the best way to distribute the serum is via dragonback, using a very tight timing schedule.  Plans are put into dissary when on of the Weyrs refuses to help.  Moreta decides to finish of the route, riding the old queen Holth as her Orlith is stuck on the Nesting Grounds with her eggs.  Old Holth and Moreta finish the grueling task and take of one last time...and never come out from between.  The death of Holth and Moreta are a huge loss to the planet,

just as it was getting back on its feet.  Leri (Holth's rider) and Orlith stay until the eggs hatch (with Olkina Impressing the Queen) and then they to go between.  Two year later Nerilka's Story was published here is that story.  Nerilka is the daughter of Lord Tolocamp and his wife Lady Pendra of Fort Hold.  She is tall, ungainly and likes to be useful.  She is left behind when her father, mother and her older (and prettier) sisters go to the gather at Ruatha, presumably to try and get the new Lord Holder Alessan to marry one of them.  While they are there the plague appears and Nerilka does her best to help her brother (who was left in charge while her father was away) maintain the quarantine placed on the planet.  She also offers her help at Healer Hall (which is located in Fort Hold) and any of the over abundance of supplies her Hold has. While they accept the supplies, her help is rejected.  Nerilka's father returns, breaking quarantine...though he holes himself up in his room to "protect" the hold leaving his wife and other daughters in Ruatha where they end up dying.  As as soon as word reaches him of his wife's death, he installs his mistress the simpering and incapable Anella as his wife and Lady Holder.  This young twitty thing (who to add insult to injury is younger then Nerilka) takes control of the Hold.  The Healer Hall applies to Lord Tolocamp for extra supplies as they are running short, and are denied.  They are also denied the ability to help the people in the internment camp that had been set up outside the Hold.  For Nerilka this is the last straw.  She cuts her hair, dresses as a drudge and takes matters into her own hands.  After securing supplies for the Healers Hall, she goes into the camps to work as a nurse (at this point she has been vaccinated).  She eventually ends up in Ruatha where she had dreamed about ever since her foster sister Suriana had married her Lord Alessan.  Nerilka or Rill as she is now known proves how helpful she can be and is asked to stay on and help restore Ruatha.  Rill is as happy as can be and gets right to work.  She is there when news of Moreta's death comes and is the one to attempt to comfort Alessan in his grief.  For Alessan this is one more tragedy in a long string and it is more then he can take, he tells Rill that he just wants to die.  Rill tells him that he can't die, at least not until their is a Ruathan heir, or the hold will fall to another holder.  Alessan (who knew all along that Rill was Nerilka, from Suriana's sketches) makes a deal that he will marry Nerilka and as soon as their is an heir, she has to mix him his cup (his way of committing suicide).  Not knowing what else to do she agrees.  Eventually Oklina impresses her queen, and Nerilka bears Alessan a child, but instead of dying, he decides to live.  Nerilka knows that he will never be the light hearted man Suriana married, or the reckless racer Moreta loved, but he is a good man who loves and cares for his family and readily recognizes Nerilka for her work and effort and that is enough for him.

Whew that was really really really long...you ready for some more?  Good.  I love reading these two books together, not only 'cause they are companion pieces but for the complete and different views you get.  With Moreta you see a strong, older woman who has not only born several children but is in charge of one of the largest Weyrs and is responsible for the care and safety of essentially a whole planet.  She is capable, decisive, fun-loving, and knows how to take responsibility.  I love that she is not some young supple waif of a girl, but a mature woman, who is described at being near the end of her child-bearing years, which puts her in her 30's or 40's, yet she is also described as desirable and fun and lovely...despite the cropped hair and fine lines on her face.  This is not the type of heroine we see a lot, usually it is the young, the new, the virginal, the unattached that the story centers around.  I love that we have a mother, who as much as she loves her

born children, knows she must be more then that, she is a mother figure that is not at all homey or hearth bound.  Then we have Nerilka, who's story is told in the first person, which is one of the few times I have heard this style from this author, but it works for this story.  Nerilka was born and raised in a completely different way then Moreta, she is a high-born Holder, taught to be much more decorous and dainty (even if she is not) she knows that arts of running a household, she knows how important a well run hold is.  She is well aware if costs, supplies and help get out of hand it could spell disaster.  It is her diligence in this sort of "homey" work that not only saves her Hold (which is the biggest and oldest on Pern) but potentially many others as well.  She does things on a smaller scale then Moreta, yet what she does is just as important if not more so to the overall survival of Pern.  Moreta is passionate and free, partly because of her being part of the Weyr (which by virtue of the dragons have to have a different code of conduct) and partly because of her nature.  Nerilka is more aware of her duty and is willing to fulfill it to the point of honor.  Moreta has a passionate, if ill-advised love affair with Alessan while Nerilka does what needs to be done after her death in helping Alessan continue forward.  In Alessan we see three different yet very valid kind of romantic loves.  We here about his first bloom of wild, young love with his wife Suriana, we get a more passionate, plunging love of Moreta, and finally a dutiful, which eventually turns into a mature and deep love for Nerilka.  I like that between these two books we see that not every love has to be a wild flame of desire at first sight with a pretty young unknown yet dangerous factor...you know what I mean.  I also like that these books show you
can have more then one love, that you can move on without being disloyal, or loving somebody any less. The best part is, after all my rambling on love, neither of these books is a love story, in fact in Moreta the page count of Alessan and Moreta together is fairly minimal compared to the rest of the book.  As far as the story there is so much for me to dive into full force.  I love that medicine was a central part of this story as that is one of my personal passions. The science was fairly accurate and the methods well thought out.  I liked learning about the healing aspect of dragons and their riders (this is so what I would do if I lived on Pern!) I also love how this book fits into the history of Pern.  In the original trilogy the song Moreta's Last Ride is sung and is also mentioned several times in the Harper Hall trilogy so to actually read the story is pretty cool, and adding Nerilka to the mix made it even better. The stories also remind us that this is actually a science fiction story when they talk about the Crossing and their ancestors and the old records that talk about influenza, connecting to an even deeper history. So obviously I love these books and think you should read all of them, and will know continue my Anne McCaffery kick 'cause I just LOVE LOVE LOVE reading her stuff! I give this combination of books 9 out of 10 golden queen dragons!

What do you think of companion books?  How do you feel about non-stock characters?  What do you like to see in your stories (e.g. medicine, music, sports)?  How obsessed am I with Anne McCaffrey?

So Many Babies!

I had a fantastic weekend and hope yours was the same.  I got to help celebrate my nephew E's first birthday (ha you can't see it but I just tried to type first and birthday at the same time...my spell check hates me ha ha ha ) which was wonderful, watched a bunch of boy movies which was interesting, actually got to spend some time outside with the Hubbin which was glorious, and was even productive enough to get to sessions of CMU's in.  And of course I read, oh I read and read and read.  Finished a book, started two others and bought two more YAY ME!  One of the interesting things about this weekend was a conversation I had with Hubbin about crowded and potentially unsafe living conditions in the area.  As an EMT I see every kind of living condition you can think of, this paired with my Baby E time and my CMU's in patient care all came together to remind me of a book I just finished reading.  Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Joy, Birth and Hard Times by Jenny Worth.  I picked this book up 'cause I love the BBC series by the same name and was in the mood for something a little different.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD (kind of)

This book is not one that has a plot so much as it has a bunch of stories all strung together.  The memoir format is not one I have read in a while, being more of a fiction person, but this book reminded me why I used to read a lot more of them.  Quick synopsis.  Jenny Worth arrived in the East End of London in the 50's to what she refers to as Nonnatus House, a pseudonym to protect the privacy of the patients and caregivers involved in these stories.  The author takes the name from St. Raymond Nonnatus who is the patron saint of childbirth, midwives, children, and pregnant women.  The author takes us through her first year or so as a trained midwife in this new and different environment.  In the 50's in the after math of WWII people live in crowded tenements  where running water is a luxury and a whole floor, or even a whole building sharing a lavatory is not uncommon.   Families often had children into the double digits all living in two or three rooms, heated by a stove that doubled as the kitchen.  In these conditions our young midwife had to learn to how to deliver babies as safely as possible.  She tells us of the various patients she saw and the various circumstances in which the births occurred.  Some of the stories are sweet, some silly, some sad (obviously I am in an alliteration phase today) but all of them real.  My favorite stories are the ones about Conchita Warren and her 25 live births, there a couple stories about this exotic woman who spoke no English yet seemed to be the paragon of wife and motherhood.  Both stories she is involved in makes me want to stand up and cheer.

This memoir is fascinating to me as a health care professional because it shows in some ways how far we have come (gloves were rarely used, shaving and enema's before birth were the norm, hygiene was optional for most patients), but also how we are starting to lose some of the personal touch that makes a nurse or doctor or even EMT a good one.  I also noted how much more parents were involved in making medical decisions for themselves and their children.  Now day's, especially if you go to a hospital to give birth, the mothers are made to feel that they must do everything the Dr. or Nurse says.  Now the vast majority of the time this is a good idea, but sometimes a Mamma has to go with her gut and say no, or speak up about something wrong.  In the book a baby is premature and the consensus is that he should be placed in an incubator in the hospital, but his mother refuses to let him go, knowing that she can give him the best care.  In the time period this happened, there was not a whole lot the Dr. could do but come check on the little guy, now days there would have been court orders to take the child away to be placed in a sterile incubator with minimal human touch.  Again, Drs. usually know what they are doing, and Nurses tend to be top notch, but this example of society allowing a parent to be a parent seems to be missing now days to our detriment (that was an awkward sentence, but I think I got my point across.).

The TV show so far has followed most of the stories fairly faithfully from the memoir.  I watched the first season before I read the book and was surprised at how closely they followed it, with a few tweaks of course, but totally recognizable.  It will be interesting to see if the future seasons follow the later memoirs, or if they go off on their own, but either way I am enjoying both immensely and cannot wait to get my hands on the next book.  Books like this remind me that as much as I will always be a fantasy/sci fi/fiction girl, that real life is just as exciting, varied, and interesting if you look for the right opportunities...it also makes me want to write down some of my favorite calls for future people to read.  I give this book 8 out of 10 babies and recommend it to anybody who is interested in post WWII history, midwivery, a couple good stories, or enjoy the tv show.

What type of memoirs do you like to read?  What era interests you?  Did you ever think a tv show about midwives would ever be so popular?

Zombies In My Head

As a bit of a treat for my Hubbin, after he was so kind enough to put up with three generations of girls under his roof for two weeks I took him to go see World War Z (mmmm Brad Pitt), which is very loosely based on the book of the same name.  This made me think of a book I just finished reading and some of the obvious comparisons I could make.  Deadline is the second book in the Newsflesh series and differs from the first one in many ways.  I am still trying to decide how feel about it.   As always
SPOILERS AHEAD

When we ended the first book Feed, our narrator and main character Georgia Mason was dead.  She was killed by her brother Shaun when she started amplifying into a zombie.  This book starts several months later and Shaun is searching for a reason to stay alive, he is our narrator this trip.  Shaun and his crew, Rebecca "Becks" Atherton, a top Irwin (somebody who essentially puts themselves in danger for ratings), Alaric Kwong, a Newsie (somebody who does there best to search out and report nothing but the cold hard facts), and Dave Novakowski, another Irwin are in the field trying to get Alaric's field license.  Shaun is out with them when they run into a pretty sever zombie pack, which they barely survive.  Shaun used to love moments like these, using them to boost his ratings, but now he can barely manage to muster up enough energy to run his news blog After the End Times.  Upon arriving back to there secure apartment, they meet Kelly
Connolly, a CDC researcher we met in the last book.  She tells the crew that she in her team have been looking into the unusual high number of deaths of people who have reservoir Kellis-Amberlee condition.  This is where a human has a reservoir of active "zombie" virus in there bodies, in Georgia's case it was her eyes.  She also informs the crew that her team mates have been killed off one by one and that she is only one left. She escaped by making a clone and "killing" it, leaving it behind to be discovered.  Shaun goes to the roof to think things over and we learn that he still talks to Georgia in his head.  His conversations are a bit unnerving because he speaks his responses out loud and even on occasion hallucinates that he could see her. The team discover that Kelly brought a bug in with her unawares and they make a run for it.  Dave sacrifices himself so the team can make it out of the building.  They head to a fellow crew mate, Magdaline "Maggie" Garcia, a Fictional (somebody who writes fiction, poetry etc.) who's parents are owners of a major pharmaceutical business.  With all that money Maggie is able to provide a safe house, complete with beyond top of the line security.  Shaun and his team continue to follow Kelly's findings down the rabbit hole and stumble upon a Dr. Shannon Abbey, a "rogue" researcher who pretty much tells the team that some people with reservoir condition may be immune to amplification of the zombie virus. The kicker to this is not everybody with the reservoir condition is immune, in fact most still amplify and need to be shot.  Shaun and his team continue to do research and finally catch a break when Mahir Gowda, the head of the Newsies learns that each new strain of the Kellis-Amberlee virus is actually man made and that people with reservoir condition are being killed off before each release of a new strain.  Shaun, Becks, Kelly and Mahir decide to make a cross country trip to Memphis which houses the CDC headquarter and try and find out just what the heck is going on.  They leave Maggie and Alaric home to hold down the fort and head off in one of Maggies vans.  They arrive at the CDC, sneak in and are confronted by Dr. Wynne who was supposedly helping Kelly escape, but instead was using her as a means to track down news team.  Dr. Wynn tells the group that the CDC is trying to make a virus that they can manage and people with reservoir syndrome can mess it up.  With this justification of his action he is able to stab Kelly with a pen before he is shot in the head.  Kelly realizing that she has been injected with the live

virus tells the rest of the team to make a run for it while she stays and distracts security.  The team leave and drive home in the middle of a hurricane like storm, they notice that the roads and towns are eerily deserted, but cannot find a radio station or get online to find out what is happening. They arrive home to discover that the virus has mutated and can now be spread by insect bites, significantly upping the amplification factor.  A massive out break occurs and the state of Florida is declared a loss.  Between this news and the knowledge that the government is trying to track them down and kill them, they decide it is best to move on.  As the team races for Dr. Abbey's new facilities they are attacked by zombies and Shaun is bitten.  He is immediately placed into isolation and he is fully prepared to turn into a zombie...but it never happens, seems like Shaun is immune.  During this whole time Shaun is having full on conversations with his dead sister, so realistic in fact that on occasion his friends speak to her like she is actually there.  We end with Georgia Mason waking up in a CDC facility without a trace of her reservoir condition, or any child hood scars. She discovers that she is a clone and a not is sent from a Dr. describing  a PT who was bitten, but never amplified.

This again like the first book was about how people lived after the zombies appeared, but seemed to focus more on the team and their families than the first one.  My two biggest problems with this book was 1) After the whole premise of the last book, Senator now President Ryman is hardly even mentioned.  The complete change in tone from something as mundane as a political campaign to the more harrowing and traditional government conspiracy story was a bit jarring.  I really loved how they combined the mundane day to day living with the constant danger and horror of zombies.  I wanted to at least hear from President Ryman, or at least Rick, who by the way ended up as vice-president. 2) It felt a bit less original and more run of the mill zombie apocalypse book to me. There was more of a "Ah look out behind you" type of feel, vs hey we have been living with zombies our whole live, while annoying we are fairly used to them so lets focus on something else type of feel.  Don't get me wrong, it is still a great series and a page turner.  Clocking in at over 500 pages I still managed to read it in 2 weeks, and that was with psycho crazy life allowing for almost no reading time. The medical stuff seemed to be pretty sound for the most part, but even rereading some of the parts did not quit make it clear what the conspiracy was and what reservoir conditions had to do with it.  I'm not 100% sold on the whole Georgia as a clone thing, hopefully it will work itself out in the third book.  Shaun as a grieving, half-crazy narrator was a weird mix of almost pathetic, to much needed humor.  I also liked getting to know some of the other characters and some insight into how the medical field works in a place like that.  Overall it was a good book, I did not like it quit as much as the first one, but I seem to be in the minority.  I would recommend it to anyone who has already read the first book and plan on finishing the series.  I give it 7 out of 10 zombie dogs. Go, Read, Enjoy.

Explaining The Unexplainable

Read an interesting short story yesterday in the collection Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears.  The story is called The Fox Wife by Ellen Steiber.  What really caught my interest (besides it being a good little story) is that she says she was inspired by medical accounts in Japan in 1892.  She took these records and married them with the kitsune lore in Japanese culture.  The point of this being that before people knew about certain illnesses, especially of the mental variety, many times they were attributed to something magical.  Since I find the human body and mind fascinating, and I love reading I decided to do some digging around and see if I could find some other common threads in the illness/magic realm  (yeah that didn't quit make sense to me either).  As I was digging around, I found many instances where historians, doctors, researchers and bloggers with too much time on their hands have found lines linking folklore, fairy tales, and legends to real life diseases, illnesses and injuries.  Here are a few examples.

Changelings/Autism- It is amazing how closely the symptoms of autism (especially the more sever forms) match up with old descriptions of changelings.  Imagine that you have this lovely child that seems to be perfectly healthy, then one day you start to notice your once loving child refuses to be touched.  The child pulls away from it's family, has outbursts over the oddest things, seems to hyper-focus on seemingly pointless tasks.  With no frame of medical reference, it would make sense to feel that your child had been replaced by a strangers baby.  Other illnesses that tend to manifest in childhood may also have contributed to the changeling myth.  What I personally find so fascinating about these clear descriptions of autism (excuse me while I climb my up on my soap box for a moment) is that it seems to point towards autism being around for a lot longer then people think.  I know many a child that has not been immunized because somebody convinced them that autism wasn't around until we started immunizing our kids, or that autism is new and contingent on pollution and environmental factors.  While certain environmental factors may play a role (we still don't know a lot about autism) stories about changelings and their dead on descriptions show us that in all probability kids have been afflicted with autism for much longer then anybody realizes, and definitely long before immunizations (getting down of my soapbox now).

Epilepsy/Demonic Possession - Anybody who has had, or witnessed a seizure can tell you it is pretty terrifying.  As an EMT I have dealt with many many many seizures and every time it hits you how crazy it looks.  We know for the most part what causes seizures, but can you imagine back before we had a name and a cause for it, seeing a person just start contorting, flailing, uttering strange sounds, eyes rolling into the back of their heads.  It is no wonder that people were convinced an evil spirit had taken possession of a loved one.  It got even worse when a person had a disease like epilepsy that caused seizures on a regular basis.  It's one thing for a person to suffer one seizure (caused by a high fever or extreme illness), but then be "rid of the demon" and never have another episode.  It would be quit another back in the day to continue these seizures even after a ceremony to excise the demon.  This also lead to a lot of unnecessary incarcerations and even deaths.

Ergotism/Witchcraft-Who would have thought something as innocent as rye flour could be a possible cause for the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials?  Among the usual jealousy, over zealousness, and greed which is really all a group of people really need to persecute their fellow man, a theory that a crop of rye may have been infected with a fungus that when consumed produces some very interesting effects.  There is an LSD like hallucinogen affect for some people.  A person could suffer from debilitating stomach pains, akin to being stabbed in the belly (which many "victims" of the "witches" described during the trial"  There may be sores, neurological issues, and mania.  Any time a large number of people had unexplained pain or illness, they just attributed it to witchcraft, because really what else could it be.  The biggest problems came when there was no obvious cause for the pain, if I accidental cut myself and see it bleed and feel the pain, it is not witchcraft, if my stomach feels like somebody is stabbing it, but I don't see any marks or can find no cause, then it might be witchcraft. It is interesting to see in history how people can take even the most minor of things and blow them out of proportion.

Oh man there are so many more of these especially when you start dealing with things like schizophrenia, OCD, porgeria, just so many illnesses that we now if nothing else can name as a scientific disease.  This is why it is so important to keep writing stories and keep reading books, it gives us a glimpse into the past and shows us that we are dealing with some of the same things today as people did hundreds of years ago.  It will be int resting in 100 years for future humanity to read our books and stories and say "hey I think they were talking about (insert name of some undiscovered ailment here), can you believe this is what they thought it was?"  Humans have a need to have an explanation for everything, especially when things go wrong. Before we had science and wide spread education, people used magic to try and explain the unknown. Thinking over some of the more contemporary books I've read, I think this generation tends to write about more intangible illnesses, mostly of the mental variety.  Liar is a good example of a modern folk lore take on a potential mental illness.  It is written in the same feel and style as a way to explain something that may not yet be explainable.

What diseases/illnesses do you recognize in your favorite folk tale?  What diseases do you think future generations will look back at us and shake their heads over?  Do I read way to much into simple stories?