Navigating Life with Epilepsy - a review

Navigating Life with Epilepsy
By David C. Spencer
Oxford University Press, 2016

I recently found myself in need of information on epilepsy, and found this book in my college library's collection.While I sincerely hope that you do not find yourself in a similar situation, I can recommend this book if you do.

Navigating Life with Epilepsy is not too difficult for the average person to understand, yet offers very specific medical and practical information. It contains a brief history of epilepsy, first aid for seizures, types of epilepsy, diagnostic and testing methods, real life scenarios, discussion of surgical options, a basic explanation of brain functions, treatment options for epilepsy, and more. A glossary, index, and a description of the most commonly prescribed medications are also included. Many of the sections begin with a real-life scenario making it easy to skip over medical information that is not pertinent to your interest or specific type of seizure.

It's helpful to know as much as possible about a life-altering medical condition, however, it's often difficult to process everything a doctor says during an office visit. Navigating Life with Epilepsy can assist in understanding treatment options and in knowing what questions to ask of your medical professional.  My family has found it helpful.



This is part of the Neurology Now Books series that includes Navigating Life with Migraine and Other Headaches, Navigating Life with a Brain Tumor, and other titles.


You can read a sample of Navigating Life with Epilepsy here.

For a fictional look at epilepsy, try 100 Sideways Miles, a YA novel by Andrew Smith. I reviewed 100 Sideways Miles for AudioFile Magazine.


If you're seeking more information on epilepsy, start with the Epilepsy Foundation website.

The Last Wild - an audiobook review

Torday, Piers. 2014. The Last Wild. Penguin Audio.  Narrated by Oliver Hembrough.

Like Eva Nine, in the WondLa series, Kester Jaynes finds that he can communicate with creatures of the wild - an ability that is particularly intriguing in a dystopian world where all animals are presumed dead - killed by the incurable red-eye virus.  Kester finds himself the leader of his own "wild," the ragtag remnants of the animal world.  Flora and fauna are pitted against commercial efficiency and industrialism in this first book of a planned trilogy.

The plot is occasionally predictable, but slow patches are often brightened by the humorous antics of The General (a likable but militaristic cockroach) and a befuddled white pigeon who speaks nonsense that is also somehow prophetic.

The author and narrator hail from the UK, so the reader or listener should be prepared for numerous British words that are uncommon here in the US (wellies, trainers, boot, windscreen, plaits, etc.).

My review of The Last Wild for Audiofile Magazine appears here.

• Listen to an audio excerpt of The Last Wild here.

In the Shadow of Blackbirds - a review

There is no easy segue from yesterday's Captain Underpants review to today's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. I primarily review children's books.  This one is definitely for young adults.

Winters, Cat. 2013. In the Shadow of Blackbirds. New York: Amulet.
Advance Reader Copy supplied by NetGalley.

Through the windows, I watched the boys proceed to a line of green military trucks that waited rumbling alongside the curb. The recruits climbed one by one beneath the vehicles' canvas coverings with the precision of shiny bullets being loaded into a gun. The trucks would cart them off to their training camp, which was no doubt overrun with feverish, shivering flu victims. The boys who didn't fall ill would learn how to kill other young men who were probably arriving at a German train station in their Sunday-best clothing at that very moment. (From Chapter 2, "Aunt Eva and the Spirits")

The year is 1918, and 16-year-old Mary Shelly Black is on her way from Portland to San Diego to stay with her widowed 26-year-old aunt. Her mother is dead. Her father has recently been arrested - swept up in the anti-German immigrant frenzy that's sweeping the country.

The sign in front of the eatery claimed the place specialized in "Liberty Steaks," but that was simply paranoid speak for We don't want to call anything a name that sounds remotely German, like "hamburger." We're pro-American. We swear! (from Chapter 13, "Ugly Things")

Young men are eagerly enlisting to fight in the trenches of Europe, and amidst it all, the "Spanish flu" ravages the population - their flimsy gauze masks are no match for the deadly virus.

The businessmen in smart felt hats rode with me, probably on their lunch break. They buried their gauze-covered noses in the San Diego Union, and one of them felt the need to read the October influenza death tolls out loud. "Philadelphia: over eleven thousand dead and counting - just this month. Holy Moses! Boston: for thousand dead." The use of cold statistics to describe the loss of precious lives made me ill. (From Chapter 17, "Keep Your Nightmares to Yourself")

The bleak situation is made all the worse by her recent discovery that her dearest Stephen, the only bright spot in her sad existence in San Diego, has enlisted in the Army, not because he desires to fight and kill German soldiers, but to show love for his country and free himself from living under the same roof as his brother, a drug-addled, "spirit photographer,"

So this is war. The declaration changed Coronado and San Diego overnight. The men are all enlisting and everyone is hurrying to make sure we all look like real Americans. One of our neighbors held a bonfire in his backyard and invited everyone over to burn their foreign books. I stood at the back of the crowd and watched people destroy the fairy tales of Ludwig Tieck and the Brothers Grimm and the poetry of Goethe, Eichendorff, Rilke, and Hesse. They burned sheet music carrying the melodies of Bach, Strauss, Beethoven, and Wagner. Even Brahm's "Lullaby."

In the Shadow of Blackbirds takes a decidedly darker turn when Mary Shelly learns of Stephen's death in the trenches of Europe.  She attends his funeral, but something is very wrong.  She can hear him, she can feel his torment.  His spirit is not at rest; and amidst the horror of war and the flu pandemic, something else is terribly, terribly wrong.  Spirit photography and séances are commonplace as millions across the country yearn to connect with loved ones lost to war or disease; but Shelly is a girl of science, of rationalism - raised in a house of reason and education.  But how can science and reason explain the anguished pleas of her deceased love?

In The Shadow of Blackbirds is gripping historical fiction and Mary Shelly Black is a tragic yet strong protagonist. Containing some of the same themes as Avi's dark, Seer of Shadows (Harper Collins, 2008) (spirit photography, rationalism vs. spiritualism), In the Shadow of Blackbirds examines these themes as well as romantic love and post-traumatic stress syndrome. The setting (San Diego and nearby Coronado Island) and the juxtaposition of love and war, disease and science combine to offer a dark and gritty debut novel.  The descriptions of trench warfare and everyday life during the massive flu pandemic are gritty and graphic, reminiscent of Mary Hooper's novel of Europe's 17th century plague, At the Sign of the Sugared Plum (Bloomsbury, 2003). The fear of death is almost palpable, made even more so by the reader's knowledge that garlic amulets and gauze masks are powerless against the killer flu. To read In the Shadow of Blackbirds is to be immersed in a grim period of American history that at times, bears resemblance to our own.


From the Author's Note,

...the influenza pandemic of 1918 (this particular strain was known as the "Spanish flu" and the "Spanish Lady") killed at least twenty million people worldwide. (Some estimates run as high as more than one hundred million people killed." Add to that the fifteen million people who were killed as a result of World War I and you can see why the average life expectancy dropped to thrifty-nine years in 1918 - and why people craved seances and spirit photography. 

Note: If you've ever watched the classic Academy Award Best Picture, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), this warning from Mary Shelly to her love will foreshadow and haunt,

 "Please stay safe. It's not everyone who has the patience to photograph a butterfly."

Period photographs of life during the influenza pandemic of 1918 available at these sites:

• www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/influenzawww.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918
• http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/

There are great resources of all kinds (music, vintage video footage and photos) at Cat Winters' site.

Here's the trailer, just released today at the Mod Podge Bookshelf. I wish it hinted at the book's rich historical detail.

Musings on The Invincible Microbe

Murphy, Jim and Alison Blank. 2012. The Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure. New York: Clarion.

The minute I saw this book, I knew that I would read it, not because I am a fan of nonfiction and Jim Murphy, but for personal reasons.  While my mother would often tell me stories of what it was like to be a child during WWII, my stepfather was older.  He lived what I considered to be a fascinating, history-book life. He was an orphan. He remembered the Great Depression.   He was a runaway. He was a "runner" on Wall Street.  He had tuberculosis.  He recalled being forced to march outside in the cold New York winter wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underpants, a common aspect of a patient's "curing" regimen.  I can only imagine that a poor orphan boy's regimen was harsher than most. To this day, I cannot look at a sepia-tinged photo of poor scantily clad children in the snow without thinking of my stepfather.  The girls on the cover of The Invincible Microbe, "curing" outside on a porch, may be smiling in the photo, but I don't believe for a minute that it was by choice. To the end of his days, my stepfather loved rich foods and warm temperatures - small wonder.


So, to me growing up, TB was a thing of the past - a disease like polio, generally eradicated and of no concern to me.  Then came the late 1980's and 1990's.  My sister lived in Manhattan, and lo and behold, tuberculosis was suddenly a topic of discussion again.  There was an outbreak in the City. She was worried.  So to me, tuberculosis was then an urban thing, of no concern to me, except where my sister was concerned.  My sister moved away from the City, and I thought little of it again ... until my children were born.  Then to me, TB was "the bubble test," and I thought little of it, except that it seemed to be an easier test than the "tine test" I remembered from childhood, and I was thankful that my kids were protected...

or so I thought, until I read The Invincible Microbe.

The Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure, tells the story of TB from its known beginning, in prehistoric times, through the days of magical, prayerful, and deadly "cures," until today, when TB is still a scourge in five areas of the world (Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, The Philippines, Swaziland, Vietnam) and is only as far away from you as a plane ride.

Thoroughly researched, sourced and indexed, with numerous photographs, The Invincible Microbe is a chronological look at the Tuberculosis germ, containing first-hand accounts (including a poem written by Robert Louis Stevenson en route to a sanatorium in Saranac Lake), period advertising, and quotes from scientific journals and other sources. It incorporates both the scientific and social aspects of infectious disease, answering such questions as:

How were breakthroughs in identification and treatment of the disease achieved? How did the medical community vet new procedures and ideas?  How was public health policy created? How did the germ mutate to survive?  How did Tuberculosis attack the human body?  How was it spread?  Who decided which patients received treatment and which do not?

Sadly, these questions are still being answered, and to date, Tuberculosis has no cure.

Comprehensive and engrossing, this is a book that will appeal to ages 10 to adult.

Want to know more about TB?  Check the Tuberculosis section of the World Health Organization (WHO) website.

• Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is hosted by Wrapped in Foil.

The Keening

LaFaye, A. 2010. The Keening. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed.

Funny thing - I began making the tags for this book before I finished it.  Other than the obvious tags - Maine, rural life, historical fiction, epidemics, ...  I had planned to add - mental illness, autism or spectrum disorder, but I had it all wrong.  It's a matter of perception, and The Keening may change yours.

The Laytons keep to themselves.  Folks in their rural area think Lyza's Pater is crazy - fit only for the "farm" down the road, Elysian Fields, a home for the insane.  Mater's family thinks she's a bit touched as well - must be for marrying Evan Layton.  As for the protagonist, 14-year-old Lyza Layton, she loves both her parents, and cannot imagine life outside her remote, coastal home of 1918 Maine.  The influenza epidemic has hit the area hard and Lyza sees the regular march of keening mourners heading to the cemetery.  She and Pater have survived the influenza, but many others in the community are not so lucky. 

Pater says little.  He carves beautifully intricate faces into wood and then sets them adrift.  He spends hours writing letters, though he has no known friends. Mater takes in sewing and sees to it that Pater eats, sleeps and wears weather-appropriate clothing - difficult chores for a wife whose husband has no concept of time or hunger or other worldly concerns.  Pater talks to angels, writes his letters and disappears into his workshop for hours or days on end, carving, carving, always carving.

But there is love in the Layton household.  Lyza feels it - even from Pater. Despite the scorn and ridicule of local folks, the Laytons are happy in their solitude.  Mater is kind, unflappable and devoted to her husband.  Lyza is enveloped in the cocoon of her family, but Mater encourages her to go to college - to the big city - to Portland. 

"...college will show you a thousand other paths." Are you sorry you took this one?"  Mater startled like I'd poked her. "Not hardly!"  She turned to me, her face pale and waxy in the faint light. "Life's hard, Lyza. Filled with little invisible walls you have to climb over.  The walls surprise you.  Or, who knows, maybe you put them there yourself to keep your parents out, but the climbing's the thrill of it.  The real work.  I love your pater.  I love you.  And this house. My sewing.  And God forgive their stubbornness, my family."

Lyza is afraid, but her only close friend, Jake, entreats her to go.  He will be tied to a life of fishing.  He wants Lyza to see more.  He wants to go with her.  When tragedies strike, Lyza will go to Portland; and she will find the way into her father's world, willing or not.

The Keening is eloquently written with phrasing that captures the mood and period - the remoteness of the community, the sadness of the epidemic, the resourcefulness of Mainers,

I headed down a shoreline road just wide enough for a horse and a body to pass each other.  Trees lined either side.  As darkness filled the road with shadows, I cursed myself for forgetting a lantern.  The moon pitied my foolishness and lit the way.

Perhaps the grand questions that author A. LaFaye hopes to inspire are ones of purpose, the soul, and the afterlife.  The one, however, that comes most immediately to mind is one of perception.  If a home is filled equally with madness and love, is that not a better home than one filled with judgment and sanity?  The Keening is a short and thoughtful book, sure to leave the reader pondering his own grand questions. Recommended reading for Grades 7 and up.

Read an excerpt from The Keening.

The Keening is published by Milkweed Editions, a non-profit publisher with a mission of "making a humane impact on society, in the belief that good writing can transform the human heart and spirit."  This is the first book that I've read from Milkweed Editions.


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