Today’s post comes to us from Jeff Norman, who is a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog.

Despite the hyperconnectivity of our current age, let us confirm with resounding pride that books still rule. Twitter, Facebook, iPads be darned, we are still suckers for some great literature. In order to appease you bookworms, this article will focus on a group of contemporary writers whose work has had a profound impact on the here-and-now. True, we do concede that technology can help you in accessing these books. (The Kindle and other books-on-the-go gadgets are admittedly awesome.) Tech savvy or not, however, any author here can provide you a warming injection of insight.

Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ought to be mandatory reading for any person interested in such slight topics as science, sociology, medicine, and community. The titular character was an African- American woman who, in the early 1950s, passed away after a ravaging bout of cancer. Some of her tissue was, without her knowledge, taken from her. Skloot writes on how these cells, which amazingly thrived on after her death in the lab, brought about medical milestone after milestone. Skloot’s decade- long dedication to this momentous and definitively important story provides us all with a much-needed lesson on the art of managing the memories that flow through our brains and bodies.

Malcolm Gladwell

This article would be inaccurate not to highlight Mr. Gladwell, whose series of nonfiction works have provided our 2010’s culture with blinding and infectious clarity and wit. His Outliers made it clear that success is not serendipitous, and that many individuals we hail as legends in their field planted the seeds of their genius remarkably early on. Blink showed us how our minds are incredibly busy at work, even when we wouldn’t expect them to be. His latest, What the Dog Saw, serves as a vibrant retrospective of Gladwell’s inimitable observation of obsession, hypothesis, and identity.

Michael Pollan

The 2000’s will probably go down as the decade where anyone and everyone really began to overthink, and under-balance, their diet and their food. We’re delivering a gastronomic hallelujah to Mr. Pollan, whose most recent work Food Rules re-simplified the process of healthful consumption. At around seventy pages, it’s lighter than the box of Twinkies you might have bought had Pollan not penned this gem. But this author harbors no spite for spuds, sprinkled cupcakes, and the delicacies we crave. On the contrary— In Defense of Food evidenced that food is great. The frequently off-kilter governmental and industry influences that bring our food to us, however, are not.

Isabel Wilkerson

Ms. Wilkerson basically redefines the import and impact of authentic investigative reporting with her recent masterwork, The Warmth of Other Suns. It depicts the exodus of more than one million Black people from the South to the North and West, which occurred at precisely the same time as the migrations that Steinbeck would famously write on. With interviews of more than one thousand people, Wilkerson armed herself to relay reams of unheralded truth and understanding. Suns makes you recompute your grasp of the full meaning of America, its culture, and its politics.

Greg Mortenson

Once upon a time, Mortenson was a mountaineer. He’s left the cliffs for the moment, but he’s not done scaling just yet. His writing shows that he owns a powerful zeal to surmount the slippery challenge of dismantling terrorism with more than a dash of good old-fashioned humanitarianism. But unlike old-school support, he doesn’t merely throw money at the situation. He gets in there—and books like Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools chronicle his urge to fight polemics with peace. He’s demonstrated how understanding one another comes so much easier when the young (and young-at-heart) are well-read and well-praised.

I have been reading quite a bit lately, so I thought I would try my hand at some book reviews, starting with my most recent read: Serendipity: A Novel by Louise Shaffer.

Serendipity - Louise Shaffer

A charming story about 4 generations of women, from New Haven to New York. Told from the perspective of the youngest, Carrie, in 2008, shortly after her mother passed away. Carrie had not known her grandmother, due to a riff in the family that was not talked about. Her mother’s passing found Carrie being all on her own, and obsessing about where she came from.

The reader gets to know several lovable characters as the pieces of the puzzle of the secrets and history of Carrie’s family get revealed. Old Uncle Paulie, the 83 year old, older brother of Carrie’s grandmother, who is still as sharp as he ever was and moved to a nursing home only to keep a friend company. George Standish, another man in his 80′s who had been Carrie’s grandmother’s gay best friend and musical conductor through the hay day of Broadway theatre in the 60′s and 70′s. Mifalda, Carrie’s paradoxically humble and proud Italian-American great-grandmother. Lu Lawson, Carrie’s grandmother, a great star of the Broadway stage, who lived her life exactly as who she was, with no apologies. And Bobby Manning, Carrie’s eccentric father, who lived hard, writing smash hits for the Broadway stage, and enjoying his successes, dying too early when Carrie was a small girl.

I fell in love with all of these characters that Louise Shaffer painted so beautifully through this character driven story, with the intrigue of family secrets, personal discovery and growth and most importantly, love and forgiveness. Serendipity: A Novel is a wonderful, and quick read, that is a great escape on a Sunday, sunny afternoon.