Deadly by Julie Chibbaro

In the early 1900s the idea of a healthy carrier of a disease was unknown.  But then an outbreak of typhoid became and became link to a cook.  And thus was the beginning of Typhoid Mary.   Told through the eyes of a teenage girl working for the Department of Sanitation, Deadly is the story of both Typhoid Mary and Prudence, who has dream of overcoming disease and death.

Her lady came down the stairs, and when we put to her the same inquiry, her eyes brightened.  "Why, of course, Mary Mallon," she exclaimed, "she was such a darling help when the children were ill."  p.94

Before reading this, I had rudimentary knowledge of Typhoid Mary.  It's sort of just an expression now, isn't it?  But this was a real life woman.  A healthy carrier of the typhoid bacteria, she unknowingly infected at least 53 people with the disease.  When confronted with the idea that she was a healthy carrier, she refused to believe it.

Deadly, told in diary form, is the story of Prudence, a second generation immigrant who has a thirst for scientific knowledge that frowned upon in young women.  She obtains a job with the Department of Sanitation with George Soper who figures out from whom the typhoid is originating.  Prudence is a very thoughtful, curious girl with a great mind for science and a need to learn about disease and death after the death of her brother.  With her father missing in action, she lives alone with her mother in a tenement.  I thought she was a great character and I liked reading her diary, or "tablet" entries and seeing life in New York at this time.  It was very interesting.  I found the whole story of Mary fascinating and I liked how the book felt real.  All the emotions were very genuine even as most of the language was very precise and almost clinical like Prudence.  Really this is a fascinating book and I'd recommend it to anyone.  My only caveat is that it makes you want to wash your hands a whole whole lot.

ARC provided by Traveling ARC Tours
Publish date: February 22, 2011
Hogwarts: Muggle Studies

Teaser Tuesdays - Delirium

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world -- your little carved-out sphere -- is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart. One day you have parents; the next day you're an orphan. One day you have a place and a path. The next day you're lost in a wilderness.

p.211-212 e-ARC Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Weekly Round-Up 12/6

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading The Mystery of the 99 Steps (Keene) and Delirium (Oliver).

Since last week I've read The Moonstone Castle Mystery and The Phantom of Pine Hill (Keene).

From Traveling ARC Tours
Deadly by Julie Chibbaro

A mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever is sweeping New York. Could the city’s future rest with its most unlikely scientist? If Prudence Galewski is ever going to get out of Mrs. Browning’s esteemed School for Girls, she must demonstrate her refinement and charm by securing a job appropriate for a young lady. But Prudence isn’t like the other girls. She is fascinated by how the human body works and why it fails. With a stroke of luck, she lands a position in a laboratory, where she is swept into an investigation of the fever bound to change medical history. Prudence quickly learns that an inquiry of this proportion is not confined to the lab. From ritzy mansions to shady bars and rundown tenements, she explores every potential cause of the disease. But there’s no answer in sight—until the volatile Mary Mallon emerges. Dubbed “Typhoid Mary” by the press, Mary is an Irish immigrant who has worked as a cook in every home the fever has ravaged. Strangely, though, she hasn’t been sick a day in her life. Is the accusation against her an act of discrimination? Or is she the first clue in a new scientific discovery? Prudence is determined to find out. In a time when science is for men, she’ll have to prove to the city, and to herself, that she can help solve one of the greatest medical mysteries of the twentieth century.

 

The Lost Hero (audio) by Rick Riordan, read by Joshua Swanson

Jason has a problem. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper. His best friend is a kid named Leo, and they’re all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids”, as Leo puts it. What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea — except that everything seems very wrong.

Piper has a secret. Her father, a famous actor, has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he’s in terrible danger. Now her boyfriend doesn’t recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. What is going on?

Leo has a way with tools. His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. What’s troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper’s gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all—including Leo—related to a god.

Sleuthing Sundays - Nancy Drew 40, 42

The Moonstone Castle Mystery (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #40)

Bess and George were always interested in observing Nancy's sleuthing procedures.  They often wondered whether it was her charm, her straight-forwarded manner, or her businesslike approach that unfailingly gained her entrance to offices of officials.  p.43

This time Nancy is asked by her father to investigate an adoption and/or kidnapping case that happened many years before as related to a new case of his.  This leads Nancy to a quaint town with a castle (for whatever reason) and another case about moonstones which, of course, leads back to the first case all wrapped up in one neat package.

The Phantom of Pine Hill  (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #42)

For several seconds Nancy did not move.  There had been a  few times in her life when she had been utterly confounded by some event which seemed to hold no explanation except a supernatural one.  This was one of those times.  p.34

When a mix up at the hotel results in Nancy, George, and Bess staying with an elderly gentlemen for their visit to Emersen University June Week, it also leads to a mystery for Nancy and her crew. The mystery involved a phantom who breaks into Uncle John's, the elderly man, library without any means of entering or exiting.  It's up to Nancy to solve that and another mystery that comes along involving sunken treasure.