My 9th book to read for 2012, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot was on my to-read list because it has been on the New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller List since the end of 2010.

When Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cancer in 1951, cells from her tumor became the first human cell line that scientists were able to keep alive in vitro, not dying after a few cell divisions. These ‘immortal’ cells were shipped to researchers around the world and used for conducting many experiments. As the book states, these “HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.”

This was a very interesting book. I learned a lot about cancer research in the book but the book is so much more than that. It is impossible not to feel empathy for Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, as you go through this story but my heart really was moved by the devastation that poverty had on her and her family. In my middle class life I cannot imagine the horrors that her and her family had to endure primarily due to being poor but of course also exacerbated by being black.

The lack of education kept impeding the families understanding of what had happened to Henrietta’s cells and caused misunderstandings on both sides of any conversation.

The strange spiritual beliefs also made me ponder my own beliefs while trying not to be judgmental. Bible verses are used to explain the ‘immortality’ of Henrietta’s cells; promises of eternal life twisted to show that Henrietta is one of God’s chosen but I ‘know’ these verses are for all believers, not special proof-texts to explain anything else. The author said that these verses are the result of taking the Bible literally, I must disagree since for me ‘literal’ also means ‘in-context’. I want to conclude that mine is a ‘rational’ faith but am sure that my beliefs must appear just as ‘strange’ to others.

This is not a book about beliefs or education but about a family. In reality the immortal cells are just the glue that holds the story together and it is a very interesting story and highly recommended.

I listen to quite a few audiobooks and I find that my MP3 players have never been able to play them at sufficient volume. Sometimes it is the fault of the player but sometimes it is the fault of the original material. On my old Sansa MP3 player I installed a hack that allowed you to boost the volume of the file above normal. Now, since I use my Android phone, you would think it would be easier but sadly no. I have tried a number of programs that purport to boost the output of the phone but none seem to work on my phone. What to do?

I realized the easy solution is to fix the ‘volume’ of the MP3 file using Audacity. Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder that works in Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. According to the web site, you can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features.

I have used Audacity before when I was listening to podcasts during my drive time. I used it convert each podcast to a single mono channel and speed up the playback 25%. A 30 minute podcast would only take 20 minutes to listen to and I could wear one earbud and not miss a thing.

Now, I just need to boost the volume and Audacity makes it an easy task. I created a ‘chain’ (Audacity’s version of a batch file) that converts the file to mono (why not) then amplifies it and finally saves the file.. These ‘chains’ can be applied to a single file or to a whole folder of files, making batch conversion quite easy for each book.

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p> You can see from the two images on the left that the original sound file’s amplitude was way low. (No wonder I could barely hear it.) Below it is the same file after it has been amplified using Audacity. I am sure if I was amplifying music files I would have to be more careful but for voice I have found that I can even amplify the volume more without any noticeable degradation. Now I can play my audiobooks and not have to strain to hear them.

My 6th book to read for 2012, “The Road by Cormac McCarthy” was on my to-read list because it was the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Set in post-apocalyptic America, the story is about a father’s love for his son.

The father and son are heading south in search of warmer weather. Along the way they are able to find food even though marauding gangs and other travelers have been scavenging the bleak and barren land. The father protects his son by avoiding all possible encounters with others yet, in the end, gets wounded by a sniper with a bow and arrow, a wound that would prove fatal.

The ending was a let-down and seemed like a easy-out. I read a few reviews on-line but nobody addressed the ending, so maybe I missed something. It seems the father spent the whole book avoiding others only to have his kid hook up with a stranger 5 minutes after the father dies and the kid and his new family live happily-ever-after. Was the father wrong the whole time or was the kid just lucky or….?

This bookstore owner looks like they had way too much time on their hands, but I love it!

“After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago, my wife and I decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto (883 Queen Street West).”

Book 2 for 2012 is “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever“. This book has spent a couple of weeks in the New York Times NonFiction Best Seller list.

Told much in the fashion of a murder/mystery, O’Reilly provides a good introduction to this tragic saga. The story contains a lot of detail and O’Reilly does not find a conspiracy theory he doesn’t like. Though a fun read, it appears the authors took some liberties with some facts based on some online reviews by historians.

I am sure the desire to fan the conspiracy portion of the story is part of the reason. I don’t think either author is a historian which probably is another reason for the errors. Hopefully ‘real’ historians will learn to write for the masses so we can get both enjoyable reads and fewer errors, till then….

After my adventures the other night taking some night shots around the Cable Bridge area (guess I need to put more of those photos up) I decided to try some more night shots. My luck with the ugly “Ash Grove Cement Plant” made me think of the old abandoned General Mills grain silo off Clearwater Ave. in Kennewick.

Rather than shoot the picture from Clearwater Ave, I crossed the railroad track to shot it from the other direction, putting the empty railroad cars in the foreground. I think it turned out pretty well except for some of the bright lights that shined through.

I looked online for info about the grain silo but couldn’t find anything about when it was built, etc. Anyone know?

Just finished John Grisham’s “The Litigators“, book 1 towards my goal of 100 books in 2012. I only read 69 books in 2011 but I only read 9 of the 12 months, so, if I can stay on track this year I should be able to read 100. This book was added to my ‘to read’ list because it had been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 9 weeks and is currently still at #4.

It was a fun read. Although predictable I wanted to keep going to see what would actually happen.

My Summary:

In a highly unlikely scenario, a young Harvard-trained lawyer looses it after 5 years of 100-hour work weeks at a large corporate firm and finds himself passed out in the shady Chicago law offices of two curmudgeonly lawyers who spend most of their time chasing ambulances when not tied up in divorce and DUI cases.

A multi-million dollar liability case falls in their lap and with big dollar signs blinding their judgement they are drug into a case that threatens to not just sink the firm but the three lawyers as well.

By day Ash Grove‘s cement plant in Kennewick is a fairly bleak. A large gray structures surrounded by gray cement dust. But by night it takes a much more ethereal quality.