KRCU's To Your Health

“There was a buzz of excitement when I arrived at my Harvard office on a June morning in 1972. Richard “Dick” Goodwin had just taken an office on the third floor."

“It's the crime of the decade! The early-morning headline explodes across my iPhone as I scan it through bleary eyes."

“The day Sloan Cooper died began before dawn and ended shortly before midnight. As a corporal in the Natural Resources Police, she'd helped take down a trio of men who spent most of the fall harassing, robbing and assaulting hikers on the trails in the Western Maryland mountains.”

“Theo couldn't imagine wanting anything in this sadness-infused pile of discards.... There were some old paperbacks slugged into a beer carton. He was always curious about what people read. He reached down to check the titles. And that is when he saw the horse.”

“Later, not a single person will recall seeing the lady board the flight at Hobart Airport."

“Phillip. The story begins before the reporters and the television correspondents flocked to interview the team."

“Day and Night, the final pages of “Clearly It Is Ocean” haunted me. I couldn't stop rereading them."

“April 6, 1865. Well, father, who won the majority? Emma or Mansfield Park? William Stevenson answered from behind his newspaper at the head of the breakfast table, “Emma, of course.”

“The monk heard that a ship had arrived carrying one of the dog-headed people whom travelers speak of when they tell tall tales of the one-eyed and the winged, and he went out to the docks to see if it was true.”

“As the fist in her belly pulled tighter, she bit her bottom lip. Ignoring the pain that rippled and receded, she tiptoed barefoot into the night."

"For years, Allina had begged her aunt and uncle for more information about her real parents. Your mother and father loved you very much, they'd always reply, but it's best to keep the past in the past.”

“One of the first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing. He doesn't immediately understand that it's a bullet at all, and it's only luck that it doesn't strike him between the eyes."

“And in northern Wisconsin, in the middle of the middle of nowhere, John Sawtelle and his new pup walked down a dirt road toward a farm that would turn out to be unoccupied and for sale."

“June sunshine poured over the street, the sounds of a jazz saxophone drifted over from next door, somewhere on Capitol Hill Senator McCarthy was waving lists of card-carrying American Commies, and a new guest had come to the Briarwood boardinghouse.”

“The Korowai Pass had been closed since the end of the summer, when a spate of shallow earthquakes triggered a landslide that buried a stretch of the highway in rubble."

Full disclosure…this week's book is very different than my usual selections. It might help to know that I have always loved a good action movie.

“Jackie is a novel, a work of fiction inspired by the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It is the story of a woman who projected a myriad of selves and who was, at her core, a deeply private person, with a nuanced and formidable intellect."

“1943. 'It's a lie.' The large man's voice was deep and hoarse. 'What's a lie?' Someone whispered. 'Where we're going.' 'They're taking us North.' 'They're taking us to die.'"

“These pages are my obsession with birds."

“January 1839. At first he did not hear the voice behind him. The red sun was glaring in his face as he rode across the center of the world. ‘Mr. Jiang!' He heard it this time. ‘Jiang Shi-Rong! Wait!”

“Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now Anthony Doerr's gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story of children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope and - a book.”

I'm Betty Martin with "Martin's Must Reads" and Haven Kimmel's autobiography A Girl Named Zippy took me back to those glorious days of childhood freedom and innocence. Haven grew up in the 1960's in the small town of Mooreland, Indiana, population 300. Her book is about her life from birth through age 10.

“It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?”

This week, Betty reviews Leif Enger's newest book Virgil Wander. Enger is a master storyteller and this book does not disappoint.

“The body floats downstream. But it is late November, and the Kennebec River is starting to freeze, large chunks of ice swirling and tumbling through the water, collecting in mounds while clear, cold fingers of ice stretch out from either bank, reaching into the current, grabbing hold of all that passes by."

“The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice. I'd been monitoring the parameters of the thicket for an hour, and my vantage point in the crook of a tree branch had turned useless."

“That evening I sat down with Lizzie and six other children in our cabin and gave a language lesson. These were indispensable."

“London Evening Post, November 21, 2017. A warning about the dangers of open-water swimming has been issued following the death of a young woman at a local nature reserve. Sophie Blake, twenty-one, went missing on the evening of July 7, 2017."

“She examines him again, this immaculate twenty something, his tall form folded into the back seat with the large suitcase he's kept beside him, opting to fill the trunk with smaller things: his tablet and laptop, backpack, duffel, cooler bag. Miserable yet sincere."

“I'm going to tell you what happened in Las Vegas, and I'm going to tell you everything as best I can, but my best is hampered by the fact this all occurred when I was doing two shows a night, channeling a dead princess, sleeping until lunchtime, popping a bit too much Adderal and Valium (yes both), and periodically - like that princess - purging over a jet-black toilet.”

“This book is nothing like the history textbooks I grew up with. It's visual, it's handwritten, it jumps around in time. It's an attempt at a new way of seeing history - placing movements and events and people from across time in conversation with one another in a way that, I hope, offers some insight into who we are as a country, and who we have the power to become.”

“Forty-seven years before construction workers discovered the skeleton in the old farmer's well on Chicken Hill, a Jewish theater manager in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, named Moshe Ludlow had a vision about Moses. Moshe had this vision on a Monday morning in February as he was cleaning out the remnants of a Chick Webb one-night stand at his tiny All-American Dance Hall and Theater on Main Street.”

“From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson. It was the Jackson 5 after all who put Ray Carney back in the game following four years on the straight and narrow. The straight and narrow - it described a philosophy and a territory, a neighborhood with borders and local customs.”

Over the course of twenty-three chapters Bryson explains the mysteries of the human body. The chapters are also riddled with information about the medical geniuses who discovered how the body works, how they tried to solve medical issues and some of the unique patients who helped with their discoveries.

“They were in the orchard. Hands bound behind their backs with rope, they were all kneeling in a neat row facing the river, first the men, then the women. At the end of the row was a girl."

“It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn't particularly notable - sometimes it isn't even noticeable - but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.”

“He could have some one out there, “ the man said, pulling back the front window curtains a tentative inch. “Watching the house right now.” He was careful not to step directly in front of the glass as he peeked outside. He ran his fingers nervously through his thick, dark hair. His handsome features were undercut by the fear in his eyes. He wasn't used to being afraid. He was unaccustomed to the role of prey.”

“It is estimated that over half a million people used the London Underground stations as shelters during the war, many on a regular basis. The stations were up to the task, becoming underground communities with provisions and services.”

“Lenny Marks seldom found herself unprepared. Lessons for her grade five students were religiously compiled a fortnight in advance, her tax return would be ready to submit no later than the fifteenth of July every year and her home fire escape plan was reviewed and updated each summer. She found tremendous peace in this level of organization, which was as close to happiness as Lenny Marks ever planned to be. Happiness, she knew, was unstable and quite unreliable.”

Richard Raytay's book “Don't Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip” is a great read for any of you listeners who had a similar childhood. It is a mix of memoir, history lesson and travelogue.

“They say that when I was born, all the wild geese flew down from the sky, and the fish swam beneath the waves, having forgotten how to swim. Even the lotus flowers in our gardens quivered and turned their heads away, so ashamed they were of their own diminished allure in my presence. I have always found such stories to be laughably exaggerated, but they prove the same thing: that my beauty was something unnatural, transcending nature itself. And that beauty is not so different from destruction.”

“In Malaysia, our grandparents love us by not speaking. More specifically, they do not speak about their lives from 1941-1945, the period when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Malaysia, tossed the British colonizers out, and turned a quiet nation into one that was at war with itself.”

“It's all about the men,” Gwyn said. “Did I tell you I tried to join a Vietnam vets talk therapy session in Dallas? It's always the same thing. ‘You don't belong. You're a woman. There were no women in Vietnam.'”

“Tuesdays at 4:30 p.m. That's her routine. I stand on a grimy square of sidewalk near the busy intersection of 16th and K Streets, scanning the approaching pedestrians. My new client will arrive in seven minutes. I don't need to meet her today. ”

“A thousand years in the past, a thousand years in the future - no matter where you live or how rich or poor you are - the four phases of a woman's life are the same,” Respectful Lady says. “You are a little girl, so you are still in milk days. When you turn fifteen, you will enter hair- pinning days. The way we style your hair will announce to the world that you are ready for marriage.”

“Julia was in the back garden, an eighteen-by-sixteen-foot rectangle hemmed by wooden fences, watching her mother dig up the last of the season's potatoes at the exact time William was due at the house. She knew he'd be punctual and that one of her sisters would let him in. William would probably be flustered by her father, who would ask him if he knew any poetry by heart, and by Emeline and Cecelia, who wouldn't cease moving or talking. Sylvia was working at the library, so he'd be spared her inquisitive stare,”

“If you visit the Alabaster River at sunrise or sunset, you're likely to see the sudden small explosions of water where fish are feeding. Although there are many kinds of fish who make the Alabaster their home, the most aggressive are channel catfish. They're mud suckers, bottom feeders, river vultures, the worst kind of scavengers. Channel cats will eat anything. This is the story of how they came to eat Jimmy Quinn.”

“With Ruth, I always thought that there would be a next time. For more than twenty years, she had defied not one but three bouts of cancer, not to mention other medical complications. Her endurance, her will to live even her plain old-fashioned grit, were unmatched. After one surgery, when most of us would be pushing the nursing station call button, she drafted a major speech. She even participated in Supreme Court oral arguments from her hospital bed.”

“So, how does it feel? Said Dr. Qadry, fixing Raymer with her pale blue eyes. “Yesterday was your last day, right?” Right. In fact his photo had made the front page of the paper, it's headline reading: “The End of an Era.”

“David's success in business was ten percent luck, ten percent indefatigability and zero percent Ida Mae. Mayer's achievements in Torah scholarship originated from an altogether different formula. Had it not been for his mother, he never would have gone to yeshiva and been accepted into the Drezner clan. Sure, his success story had a supporting cast - Rabbi Kugel, Mrs. Kugel, his early yeshiva mentors - but when Ida Mae revealed her Jewish identity to her sons that blistering summer day, she set everything in motion.”

In Performance. Paris, October 20, 1968. In her apartment on Avenue Georges Mandel, Maria drew the brush across her eyelid into an italic flick. Her hand was surprisingly steady. It was always like this before a performance: there would be nerves before, but once she sat down in front of her dressing room mirror, she would become completely absorbed in her task and the terrors would recede as she painted her face.”