Bookworm: ‘The Sky Was Falling’ is a good, and stormy book

“The Sky Was Falling: A Young Surgeon’s Notes on Bravery, Survival, and Hope”

• By Dr. Cornelia Griggs
• c. 2024, Gallery Books
• $28.99, 304 pages

The storm is coming. Take this as a warning and prepare yourself. Wishful thinking won’t deter it. Hopefulness won’t lessen its impact. Vigilance and readiness are your best defenses now because you can’t stop it. The storm is coming and in the new book “The Sky was Falling” by Dr. Cornelia Griggs, it takes lives on its way out.

She had originally planned to be a journalist.

In the end, though, medicine called to Cornelia Griggs, who first dreamed of “a do-it-all family-practitioner.” There were a lot of “frazzled primary care physicians” in the industry, though, and so she sought other options.

Watching a single surgery altered everything. She “was addicted, totally.”

By the spring of 2020, she was at the end of her ninth and last year of medical training, with a job in Boston awaiting her. Her husband, also a surgeon, was already there; she and their two children would join him after she graduated.

Everything was set.

And then she began hearing about a virus that was killing people, in China, then Italy, then in the Seattle area. Griggs says she felt like it was “closing in on us in New York” but maybe she was reading too much into it. Or was the virus was already in the city? Had it already touched her friends, her family, her patients?

Within days, life in New York changed for nearly everyone; though officials at her hospital were optimistic early-on, that changed, too. Griggs and her colleagues worked to overcome staffing issues while caring for Covid-stricken New Yorkers, risking their lives as protective equipment supplies dwindled. Though it made her feel awful, Griggs sent her children, caretakers, and her mother out of town for safety’s sake, and she became a medical activist, speaking out on behalf of medical personnel who weren’t getting government support, and for their patients.

She’d almost accomplished everything she’d ever wanted, and she’d been afraid that might make her “boring and predictable. “But,” she says, “after the last decade it would be a welcome change of pace.”

Too soon for this? Yes, no, buckle in because this year’s shelves are about to be full of Covid-19 memoirs. In “The Sky Was Falling,” you’ll read just a slice of it, from the beginning and with no small amount of anger and frustration.

Indeed, author Dr. Cornelia Griggs freely shares her emotions with readers, including personal feelings of fear for her patients and her own family. Because much of what you read came from a diary kept four years ago, Griggs’ memories are keen-edged, with a fresh sense of urgency and outrage that lays the mood right in a reader’s lap. There’s no mistaking the exhaustion in that, or the gratitude for a colleague’s efforts, or for the sheer enormity of what all occurred.

“The Sky Was Falling” is an easy book to slip into and an easy one to understand, with its lack of technical terminology and medical lingo. Give it a try; it’s a good book, and a stormy one.

“The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading”

• By James Patterson and Matt Eversmann with Chris Mooney
• c. 2024, Little, Brown
• $28, 338 pages

Last night, you got between the covers and went to South America. It wasn’t difficult. A few days ago, you walked around London in 1888; you were in the future before that; you’ve met con artists, florists, runaways, and heroines, and you didn’t even have to leave your house. You can experience many things with a book, and in “The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians” by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann, you’ll read about a different kind of adventure.

“To be a bookseller,” say the authors, “you have to play detective.”

That means determining which book with a “blue cover” is the one the customer wants. It’s asking the right questions to find the right fit for young readers and assuring book lovers that “that’s okay” if they didn’t like something.

It’s having a heart that’s “plugged into this work.”

When you’re a librarian or bookseller, you get to meet celebrities, politicians, and authors like Michelle Obama, Brad Meltzer, James Patterson, and local writers. Your library or bookstore often becomes “a small community, a place where people can... discuss books with others, and get book recommendations.” It’s “a happy gathering place” but it’s also a business that requires planning, money, a dream, and sometimes a bit of luck.

And, of course, you can’t forget the customers, patrons, and your co-workers. Like the now-full-time employee who started years ago as a high-schooler, or the customer who comes in weekly for a pile of goodness. The community that kept the doors open-ish during the pandemic or after a natural disaster. That employee who happens to be the bookstore dog.

A good bookstore or library helps “meet [people] where they are.” In the back room, it works as a place for industry folks to network. It’s a place to experience “Book Joy.” It’s where you can find beloved authors, new favorites, and old books. It’s where literacy is promoted and the very idea of book banning is absolutely unthinkable.

It’s a place to find a book. And “if you don’t like it... try something else!”

Several variations of the word “magic” appear inside “The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians.” It’s even in the subtitle, and for good reason: if you’ve come this far in this column, you know that there’s a certain magical quality about reading. Here, you’ll get to know people who help put books in your hands.

Authors James Patterson and Matt Eversmann let their interviewees – experienced booksellers and bibliognosts from all kinds of libraries – speak to the heart of all readers through brief snapshots of beginnings, average days, good fights for literacy, and favorite things about their jobs. You’ll find mostly happy words here, but a few frustrations sneak through and this book also puts to rest a few myths – in particular, that booksellers and librarians do not “sit around and read all day ... ”

But that shouldn’t stop you from doing it, so find “The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians.” It’s what you want when you want to stay between the covers.

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The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. She has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. Terri lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books. Read past columns at marconews.com.