The Book Babes

Change of day and time for April radio show

Couldn't find the Book Babes today? Here's the reason: The Book Babes program on WMNF-FM 88.5, scheduled to air at 11:30 a.m. today, was postponed because of the station's ongoing marathon needs. It has been rescheduled for 1:05 p.m. on Thursday, April 29. Check out the highlights below.

Meanwhile, go to wmnf.org and help out WMNF during its marathon. WMNF, a non-profit, no commercial radio station, deserves any penny you can send its way. Don't forget to tell them how much you like the Book Babes program!

READING OUR WAY THROUGH APRIL: EARTH DAY, POETRY MONTH and REMEMBERING VIETNAM

Earth Day. Poetry Month. The anniversary of the fall of Saigon 35 years ago. April is a month of celebrations and remembrances. For their April radio show, The Book Babes recommend books for all these occasions.

Catch the show on WMNF-88.5 in the Tampa Bay area and down the west coast of Florida or streaming on the Internet at wmnf.org on Wednesday, April 21, at 11:30 a.m.

Here are some highlights:

APRIL IS THE CRUELLEST MONTH FOR EVERYONE BUT POETS

Margo interviews poet and Florida State University professor David Kirby about his anthology,  "Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else," just out from the University of Georgia Press. He edited the volume with fellow poet (and wife)  Barbara Hamby (The University of Georgia Press) and they're still talking to each other. The book includes a poem perfect to give mom on Mother's Day (to keep up the celebration theme): Billy Collins' "The Lanyard." During the interview, listen to Kirby define what seriously funny poetry is (forget Ogden Nash) and ruminate on why he likes long book titles. Also hear him read a poem about Rotarians (yes, it's seriously funny).

HAS IT BEEN 35 YEARS? THE FALL OF SAIGON, APRIL 30, 1975

Ellen recommends two very different books about the Vietnam War:

"Matterhorn," by Karl Marlantes (El Leon Literary Arts/Atlantic Monthly Press) -- This nearly 600-page work of fiction is the life's work of a Marine veteran who recreates his combat experience in graphic detail. His story, which culminates with a bloody battle as the troops fight to retake an area in the demilitarized zone that they had given up a short time before, told entirely from the perspective of those in the bush, casts the Vietnam War as the product of American hubris and callous disregard, as the legal suits would say, for the men (no women in this book) on the ground.

"The Lotus Eaters," by Tatjana Soli (St. Martin's Press) -- Photojournalist Helen Adams is drawn to Vietnam after her brother dies in battle and is caught up in the heady atmosphere and adrenaline rush of war. Like the Marlantes' book, this novel captures the senselessness of money and treasure spent in a hopeless cause, but its lyrical images of the country and Adams' relationships with two men make it more than a war story.  

EARTH DAY IS FOR TREE-HUGGERS AND SO IS THIS BOOK

Margo recommends a book about trees to keep on your nightstand and read throughout the year, reminding yourself that every day is Earth Day:

"Lives of the Trees: An Uncommon History," by Diana Wells (Algonquin Books) -- Wells, author of  "100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names," writes the kind of nature book even non-gardeners can appreciate. Who know those trees outside your house had such interesting stories to tell? Margo reads a snippet from the chapter on bamboo (yes, it's technically a tree) and reads a poem by T.S. Eliot about it. (Hey, Earth Day just connected to National Poetry Month!).

 

 

TEAM IMMORTAL DOUBLES DOWN

A packed house greeted Rebecca Skloot at Powell's Books this week, and well it should have: The author of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" is a hometown girl who has written a critically acclaimed bestseller, a nonfiction book about a black woman who died of cervical cancer in the 1950s and left the tissue sample that produced the HeLa (short for Henrietta Lacks) cells now standard in laboratory research. Skloot, who attended a Portland alternative school that's just up the street from Powell's, said she got the idea for the  book 20 years ago from a community college course she took while in high school. She was poised and gracious, proud of the two sets of parents (including her father, writer Floyd Skloot) who formed the core of her "Team Immortal," which helped set up a promotional tour that's been just part of her publicity blitz. Among other things, she has even fenced with Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central. (Colbert, in his role as a comedic version of the incisive interviewer, tends to throw extreme and hilarious curve balls. She said she was given no advance warning of which way they'd fly.)  

Describing her ten-year effort on the book, Skloot said that Lacks' family initially turned her away because she was just the latest in a string of callers who wanted something from them. She noted that African-Americans had good reason to be suspicious of scientists bearing test tubes, given how medical research has sometimes exploited them in the past. But when a questioner asked if the book was about racism, Skloot pulled in her horns: Her focus, she said, was more about a lack of education on the part of the subjects and the failure of scientists to explain their mission to those of us without Ph.D.s in biology.

She said that the Lacks family has never received a dime for Henrietta's cells, but paying them would set an inhibiting standard for research. Wisely, she is trying to make some recompense through the back door: She has started a foundation that provides scholarships for Henrietta's descendants and is contributing some of her book royalties to it.  

Eloquent as she was, however, for me the best line of the night was not Skloot's. After the Q&A ended and the author sat down to sign copies of her book, I overheard a group of women behind me talking about her. "I thought she'd never finish high school," one of them said. I turned, looking surprised, and the women gave me a collective, knowing nod. Apparently it wasn't just Henrietta's cells that had come a long way, baby.

I left the building thinking less about the marvels of the HeLa cell and more about the possibilities that lie within any non-conforming teen. All he or she needs is a good brain, good instincts and good guidance. Come to think of it: That's a lot. 

--Ellen