Introducing the HSL Monthly Book Display

“Where are all of the books?” is a question that we still get asked at the Health Sciences Library service desk, four years after moving from Diehl Hall to the Phillips-Wangensteen Building. While patrons can no longer browse our books, we do still have an actively growing and vibrant collection located in a basement storage space. To showcase those materials, and to encourage patrons to check out our collections online, we began a monthly book display at HSL. The display sits on top of our reference shelf and features many of our newest acquisitions while following a theme. The display has been going on since June 2023, and has included monthly themes like “History of Medicine,” “Cardiology,” “Spooky Skeletons (orthopedics),” and “Reproductive Justice.”

Explore the list of books below to see what’s featured in the December-January book display!

December 2024 – January 2025: Graphic Medicine

Billy, me & you : a memoir of grief and recovery
A moving, surprisingly funny, and inspiring graphic memoir by a woman who lost her two-year-old son after heart surgery, Billy, Me & You is a bracing and memorable account of recovery after bereavement. Nicola Streeten’s little boy, Billy, was two years old when he died following heart surgery for problems diagnosed only a few days earlier. Ten years later, Streeten revisited her diaries and notebooks made at the time: this wonderfully vibrant narrative recounts how she and her partner recovered.

Nervosa
A memoir about disordered eating, chronic illness, and a profound relationship with hope.

Nick Pope : …a diary
Sixteen-year-old Nick Pope was born with prominent birthmarks around both of his eyes and faces teasing and bullying from both classmates and strangers. He also struggles with depression and confusion about his sexual orientation. Nick finds refuge and release in drawing, and gains tentative confidence that his artistic abilities are worth nurturing and developing.

Blossoms in autumn
Ulysses is a 59-year-old widower who, since retiring, has been in the grip of loneliness. The former moving man is without direction or purpose. He can’t even find solace in the company of his children: his daughter is dead, his son consumed by work. Mrs. Solenza is a 62-year-old former model. Once a magazine cover star, she now runs the family business: a cheese shop owned by her late mother. She, too, is alone. Two lives drift sadly by, inching ever closer to old age. Until, one day, they collide–and an emotional earthquake happens. A unique collaboration between veteran comics writer Zidrou and rising star Aimée de Jongh, Blossoms in autumn is a masterful exploration of growing old and falling in love.

Proxy mom : my experience with postpartum depression
Marietta and Chuck, madly in love, are expecting a baby. But childbirth marks the end of the fairy tale. Zoe’s birth didn’t go as Marietta imagined, and the maternal instinct is slow to manifest itself. While she no longer recognizes her body, Marietta feels herself losing her footing in the face of this vulnerable baby for whom she is now responsible. Will she manage to feel like a mother? To love her baby? To stop thinking that a proxy mom would do better than her? A humorful but realist viewpoint on a problem experienced by a significant number of new mothers, with an insight on how to overcome it.

Naked : the confessions of a normal woman
In this unabashed and uncensored personal memoir, author Éloïse Marseille examines her sexual education (and miseducation), from a forbidden first kiss with a female best friend in Catholic school to her exposure to the extremes of online porn, fumbling hookups, and navigating the complexities of lust and love in the modern era… But most importantly of all, the author’s nuanced relationship with her own body, sexuality, and self.

Dumb : living without a voice
Dumb’s protagonist Georgia lives the relatively carefree and ordinary life of a twentysomething in Montreal: working at a café, volunteering at a local bike co-op, and going out on the town with friends. But when a sudden unanticipated throat injury forces her into months of silence, her life is thrown into disarray. Unable to work her customer service job, she must find new income. Conversing with friends becomes complicated and exhausting. And she is forced to give up a hobby she loves — singing! Navigating a world that appears to be closing in on her seems more and more impossible. Part memoir, part medical cautionary tale, Dumb tells the story of how the book’s author copes with the everyday challenges that come with voicelessness.

One in a million
Something is wrong with Claire, but she doesn’t know what. Nobody does, not even her doctors. All she wants is to return to her happy and athletic teenage self. But her accumulating symptoms–chronic fatigue, pounding headaches, weight gain–hint that there’s something not right inside Claire’s body. Claire’s high school experience becomes filled with MRIs, visits to the Mayo Clinic, and multiple surgeries to remove a brain tumor. But even in her most difficult moments battling chronic illness, Claire manages to find solace in her family, her closest friends, and her art.

Hole in the heart : bringing up Beth
A memoir, in graphic novel format, of the author’s emotions and the challenges and decisions she faces in raising a child with Down syndrome