Hey y’all, it’s cuffing season. No, we don’t mean you should go out and test everyone you meet for hypertension - though it’s not a bad idea. Instead, we suggest settling in with a good read and following it with a matched tv show or movie. Yes, we’re all about pairing up this December and January as we observe World AIDS Day, International Day of Persons with Disability, Glaucoma Awareness, Cervical Health Awareness and Birth Defects Awareness months, along with any of the numerous holidays you might celebrate.
The following are 10 books from our collection paired with a movie or series that can be accessed on various streaming services – including the UNLV Kanopy subscription. If you don’t get the pairing decisions, you can blame – or maybe talk to – Katie!
Between Two Kingdoms by
An Emmy Award-winning writer and activist describes the harrowing years she spent in early adulthood fighting leukemia and how she learned to live again while forging connections with other survivors of profound illness and suffering.
A few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, Jaouad received a diagnosis of leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. After countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant she learned that a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it's where it begins. How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. This is her inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again. -- adapted from jacket
The Fault in Our Stars (movie). Streaming on HBOMax, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
This Is Going to Hurt by
Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships. Welcome to the life of a junior doctor. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line (with a foreword attempting to explain the National Health Service to a non-UK audience). Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, this is everything you wanted to know--and more than a few things you didn't--about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar.
Scrubs (series). Streaming on Hulu.
Sick by
A Best Book of the Year: Real Simple, Entropy, Mental Floss, Bitch Media, The Paris Reivew, and LitHub. Time Magazine's Best Memoirs of 2018 * Boston Globe's 25 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018 * Buzzfeed's 33 Most Exciting New Books * GQ Best Non Fiction Book of 2018 * Bustle's 28 Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2018 list * Nylon's 50 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018 * Electric Literature's 46 Books to Read By Women of Color in 2018 "Porochista Khakpour's powerful memoir, Sick, reads like a mystery and a reckoning with a love song at its core. Humane, searching, and unapologetic, Sick is about the thin lines and vast distances between illness and wellness, healing and suffering, the body and the self. Khakpour takes us all the way in on her struggle toward health with an intelligence and intimacy that moved, informed, and astonished me." -- Cheryl Strayed, New York Times bestselling author of Wild A powerful, beautifully rendered memoir of chronic illness, misdiagnosis, addiction, and the myth of full recovery. For as long as author Porochista Khakpour can remember, she has been sick. For most of that time, she didn't know why. Several drug addictions, some major hospitalizations, and over $100,000 later, she finally had a diagnosis: late-stage Lyme disease. Sick is Khakpour's grueling, emotional journey--as a woman, an Iranian-American, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems--in which she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness and her addiction to doctor prescribed benzodiazepines, that both aided and eroded her ever-deteriorating physical health. Divided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course--New York, LA, Santa Fe, and a college town in Germany--as she meditates on the physiological and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. A story of survival, pain, and transformation, Sick candidly examines the colossal impact of illness on one woman's life by not just highlighting the failures of a broken medical system but by also boldly challenging our concept of illness narratives.
Gaga: Five Foot Two (movie). Streaming on Netflix.
We Are All Perfectly Fine by
When we need help, we count on doctors to put us back together. But what happens when doctors fall apart? Jillian Horton, a general internist, has no idea what to expect during her five-day retreat at Chapin Mill, a Zen centre in upstate New York. She just knows she desperately needs a break. At first she is deeply uncomfortable with the spartan accommodations, silent meals and scheduled bonding sessions. But as the group struggles through awkward first encounters and guided meditations, something remarkable happens: world-class surgeons, psychiatrists, pediatricians and general practitioners open up and share stories about their secret guilt and grief, as well as their deep-seated fear of falling short of the expectations that define them. Horton realizes that her struggle with burnout is not so much personal as it is the result of a larger system failure, and that compartmentalizing your most difficult emotions--a coping strategy that is drilled into doctors--is not useful unless you face these emotions too. Jillian Horton throws open a window onto the flawed system that shapes medical professionals, revealing the rarely acknowledged stresses that lead doctors to depression and suicide, and emphasizing the crucial role of compassion not only in treating others, but also in taking care of ourselves.
Nine Perfect Strangers (series). Streaming on Hulu.
A Thousand Coloured Castles by
Myriam is a woman who sees things a little differently from other people. Strange figures in garish costumes accompany her to the post office, wild exotic plants sprout from supermarket shelves and phantom walls rise up to block her path. Her husband Fred doesn't know what she's talking about. Whenever he looks there's nothing there. So when Myriam sees a young boy shut up in the house next door, neither Fred nor their daughter Claire believes her. The only ally she has is her 4 year old grandson, Jack, who is happy to see things her way.
The Demon under the Microscope by
The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. It was sulfa, the first synthetic antibiotic. Science writer Hager chronicles the history of the drug that shaped modern medicine. Sulfa saved millions of lives--among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.--but even more, it changed the way new drugs were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients; and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness. This book illuminates the vivid characters, corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful planning, lucky breaks, cynicism, heroism, greed, hard work, and the central (though mistaken) idea that brought sulfa to the world.-- Publisher description.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (series). Streaming on Disney+.
Second Avenue Caper by
Winner of the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Graphic Novel AVillage Voice Best Graphic Novel of 2014 The renowned graphic-book author Joyce Brabner'sSecond Avenue Caper is the true story of a tight-knit group of artists and activists living in New York City in the early 1980s who found themselves on the front lines in the fight against AIDS. Struggling to understand the disease and how they could help, they made a deal with a bona fide goodfella, donned masterful disguises, piled into an "A-Team" van, and set off for the border, determined to save their bedridden friends by smuggling an experimental drug into the United States from Mexico. With their community in crisis and the world turned against them, this impassioned gang of misfits never gave up hope as they searched for ways to raise awareness and beat the plague. Fast-paced, poignant, and beautifully illustrated by the award-winning illustrator Mark Zingarelli,Second Avenue Caper is a heartfelt tribute to the generation that faced down AIDS.
Dallas Buyers Club (movie). Streaming on Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Paramount+.
How to Survive a Plague by
One of Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the Decade A definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic, here is the incredible story of the grassroots activists whose work turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Almost universally ignored, these men and women learned to become their own researchers, lobbyists, and drug smugglers, established their own newspapers and research journals, and went on to force reform in the nation's disease-fighting agencies. From the creator of, and inspired by, the seminal documentary of the same name, How to Survive a Plague is an unparalleled insider's account of a pivotal moment in the history of American civil rights.
Nothing Without Us: Women in the Global Fight Against AIDS (movie). Streaming on Kanopy (click to access)
When We Rise by
2017 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER The partial inspiration for the ABC television mini-series! "You could read Cleve Jones's book because you should know about the struggle for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights from one of its key participants--maybe heroes--but really, you should read it for pleasure and joy."--Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. Like thousands of other young people, Jones, nearly penniless, was drawn in the early 1970s to San Francisco, a city electrified by progressive politics and sexual freedom. Jones found community--in the hotel rooms and ramshackle apartments shared by other young adventurers, in the city's bathhouses and gay bars like The Stud, and in the burgeoning gay district, the Castro, where a New York transplant named Harvey Milk set up a camera shop, began shouting through his bullhorn, and soon became the nation's most outspoken gay elected official. With Milk's encouragement, Jones dove into politics and found his calling in "the movement." When Milk was killed by an assassin's bullet in 1978, Jones took up his mentor's progressive mantle--only to see the arrival of AIDS transform his life once again. By turns tender and uproarious, When We Rise is Jones' account of his remarkable life. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the harrowing, sexy, and sometimes hilarious stories of Cleve's passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and and violence alike. When We Rise is not only the story of a hero to the LQBTQ community, but the vibrantly voice memoir of a full and transformative American life.
Milk (movie). Streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV movie.
Being Heumann by
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year for Nonfiction "...an essential and engaging look at recent disability history."-- Buzzfeed One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism--from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington--Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy's struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a "fire hazard" to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher's license because of her paralysis, Judy's actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people. As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples' rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann's memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.
Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (movie). Streaming on Netflix.
Special (series). Streaming on Netflix.