Biographies for fun and profit!

At this time of year I’m always eager to get outside and put to right all the gardening projects that I didn’t finish last fall. Despite having lived in Iowa since 1992, winter surprises me every year by arriving when I’m only halfway down my to-do list. Now, when my enthusiasm is at its zenith, it’s too muddy to work outside.
Thus, every year I ended up weeding inside the library since I can’t do it outside. I tackled the fiction shelves after Christmas. The greatest numbers of the books we buy are fiction, plain old made-up stories. Since we are constantly adding new ones, it’s necessary to constantly get rid of the older, less well-loved ones to make space.
The non-fiction books grow in number more slowly. Sometimes I don’t think of weeding those shelves until Kathy (gently) tells me that she can’t squeeze another volume on the shelves. Most recently it was the shelves of biographies that were causing consternation. I love biographies. I don’t read them all by any means. I just like knowing that they are there. All libraries have biographies of famous people. If you are just itching to know more information about Martin Van Buren than Wickopedia offers, you expect to find it at the library.
But, the biographies that I really treasure are the ones about ordinary people who have accomplished or endured something extraordinary. Any time I feel sorry for myself, missing my far-flung children for instance, I can pick up a book about someone who walked 100 miles across a desert to find medical care for her babies. Sick of a lo-o-o-ng Iowa winter? There’s a book about a doctor who treated herself for breast cancer while stranded at the North Pole. See how it works? Pretty quickly I begin to feel I’m blessed with good fortune and need to get up out of my comfy recliner and help someone else. Listed below are some of the biographies that are ready to leave the library for a new home. Temporarily they are housed on the “free” shelves; come in and help yourself to these or many others that are just waiting to change your life.
The Book of Kehls by Christine Kehl O’Hagan. The story of a family in which five generations have been struck by Duchene Muscular Dystrophy.
My Detachment by Tracy Kidder. Pulitzer Prize winner Kidder studied at the University of Iowa. This book is his memoir of his tour of duty in Vietnam.
A Good Dog: The Story of Orson Who Changed My Life by Jon Katz. I’m a sucker for a good dog story. I think I keep hoping that my dogs will turn me into Mother Theresa or Eleanor Roosevelt if I’m just patient enough with them.
Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock and Finding Myself by Jeanne Marie Laskas. Another one!
Ten Minutes from Normal by Karen Hughes. Another sort of biography that can’t take up shelf space too long: a story about someone who was once very newsworthy, but who has now faded into oblivion. Hughes was an advisor to George W. Bush.
The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up by Rich Blake. This one will really make you forgot your troubles. Herbert was a Buffalo city firefighter who was injured in 1995. After 10 years in a coma, he woke up. After one day, he returned to his deep sleep and never experienced another clear moment. He died one year later of pneumonia.
See how this works? There is always someone worse off than me. Stop by the library this week. Therapy at no extra charge!