Books

Books I've read recently include:

- Inspirational Romance's "After the Storm" series. Set in Kansas following a tornado, I found it interesting the authors' takes on life in small-town Kansas. Some hits. Some misses.

- Another series, "Weddings by Bella." Lots of laugh and fun in this light-hearted series about an Italian young woman running a themed-wedding business in Texas.

- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. HeLa cells are the most widely used human cells for medical research. They originated from cervical cancer in a black woman back in 1951(?). Despite the fact that her cells have become a multi-million dollar business and have been instrumental in practically every medical development since that time, her children didn't even know her cells had been cultured until 20 years after her death. This is the author that has researched the life of Henrietta Lacks and her family. Definitely got me to thinking about issues such as tissue rights as I was reading it. (Did you know that if you've ever had tissue removed--mole, biopsy, etc--it's probably being stored for possible use in research?)

- Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files. by Jim Butcher. This is an author that JM follows closely, but I generally don't get into the books which are fantasy and adventure based in Chicago. Since these were all short-stories, I found them easier to enjoy without getting my life distracted by a full-length adventure.