During this past year or so, a family member of mine has been dealing with heart issues. Luckily it hasn’t been anything too serious, but if you’ve ever experienced a heart-related issue or illness yourself, you know that when it comes to the heart, everything is serious.
In my younger years, let’s say before I reached the solidness of middle age, I thought of February as the month to send tokens of affection to family and friends. A bouquet of roses, a heart-shaped box of chocolates, a special greeting card, these are the things that represented my love for my sweetheart and my family. Time passes, I grow older (perhaps wiser, too; it’s hard to tell sometimes), and I find myself wishing for nothing but the health and happiness of the ones I love. Sorry if someone was expecting chocolate.
This Valentine’s Day I want to celebrate the heart – the heart in all its muscular organ splendor. I am all about heart health these days, especially considering my personal interactions with family and their cardiac organs, but my purpose with this column is to celebrate the hardest working muscle/organ in the body. If you want to read about eating and/or exercising for heart health, the library has plenty of books on the topic, and I encourage readers to search the catalog and/or shelves for relevant titles. Today’s reading list, however, beats the drum for books about our amazing pumper, the heart.
If middle age has taught me anything, the body rules the day for good or bad. Here’s to the continued health of Valentine hearts everywhere.
- “The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love” by Marilyn Yalom
- “Can You Die of a Broken Heart?: A Heart Surgeon’s Insight into What Makes Us Tick” by Nikki Stamp
- “Open Heart: A Cardiac Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table” by Stephen Westaby
- “Pump: A Natural History of the Heart” by Bill Schutt
- “Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart” by Mimi Swartz
New at the Library
Fiction
- “The Fortunate Ones” by Ed Tarkington
- “Telephone” by Percival Everett
- “Violeta” by Isabel Allende
Nonfiction
- “The Crafty Chica Creates!: Latinx-Inspired DIY Projects with Spirit and Sparkle” by Kathy Cano-Murillo
- “Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma” by Galit Atlas
- “How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question” by Michael Schur
Children
- “Cook It!: The Dr. Seuss Cookbook for Kid Chefs” by Daniel Gercke
- “Daddy Speaks Love” written by Leah Henderson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis
- “A Mouse Called Miika” written by Matt Haig, illustrated by Chris Mould
This is just a small sampling of the many new titles added each week to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District collection. Find more in our catalog, or call (360) 906-5000 to reserve titles or find additional listings.
Jan Johnston, Collection Manager
Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries
You can email Jan at readingforfun@fvrl.org
A version of this "Check It Out" column was published in The Columbian newspaper on February 6, 2021.
Find more book columns in our Off the Shelf blog.
