Recommended

Within the past month, I have read completed four books.  

I have also read several chapters from my Folklore and Biology 

textbooks and I am on track with the 

100 day Book of Mormon reading plan our ward is doing.  

I have read a lot this month.  

I have watched no television this month.

Today I added two of the four recently completed books to my 

"Favorite Books" list on this blog.  

One of them should have been there all along 

because I have read and loved it twice before.  

I just finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 

by Betty Smith for the third time.  

I read it first when I was a teenager and again about 

12 years ago, but this reading, has left my heart weighed 

with a pang of tenderness and sadness.  

The poignant story of Francie Nolan growing up in New York 

in the early 1900s is both 

powerful and gentle; brutal and sweet.

The second book added to the list was one I 

finished a few days ago,  

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

by Rebecca Skloot is  

the true account of the woman behind the 

infamous HeLa cells which have changed the course of 

medical history forever.  It is also about Henrietta's 

poor, uneducated and beleaguered family left behind 

to struggle and suffer through the mystery of who 

their mother was and the part she has played in 

advancing modern science.

At times it was so compelling, I could hardly put it down 

and at others times, so disturbing 

I wasn't sure I could pick it up again.

I recommend them both heartily!