The Monstrosity Gazette: A weekly smattering of all things literary...

Bookish Quote of the Week:

"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."

 —Lemony Snicket

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Today in Literary History:

On this day in 1975 P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse died, aged ninety-three. Given the hundred books and the three-dozen musicals, it seems reasonable to believe the account of Wodehouse's final moments which has him collapsing while trying to pick up the pen and papers his wife had thrown across his hospital room. On this day in 1946 George Orwell published "In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse," in which he tries to rescue the author from his stickiest and most famous spot of trouble.

For more literary history, please visit Today in Literature.

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Literary Pic of the Day:

 

Man Reading by Rembrandt van Rijn

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Book on my Radar:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
Crown (Feb. 2010)
384 pages
Nonfiction: Medicine/Diseases

Summary in a Sentence:

Examines the experiences of the children and husband of Henrietta Lacks, who, twenty years after her death from cervical cancer in 1951, learned doctors and researchers took cells from her cervix without consent which were used to create the immortal cell line known as the HeLa cell; provides an overview of Henrietta's life; and explores issues of experimentation on African-Americans and bioethics.