8-29-2025

August 31^st is International Overdose Awareness Day. A fact I learned from Eve Klawitter from the Walworth County Department of Health and Human Services. Eve reached out to Walworth County libraries last month asking if any were interested in partnering on a display promoting awareness of the day and the issue. We agreed.

The display contains items from both organizations. Walworth County Public Health provided brochures on prevention and other take away literature, a sign containing a QR code leading to resource provided by the county, and an art activity called “Key to Ending Overdoses”. The keys are wooden cut out attached to a ribbon. Anyone interested is invited to decorate a key with encouraging words, advice, memorials, etc. There are also a handful of free Narcan kits with additional resources and Deterra bags for disposal of expired or unwanted medications

The library supplied related books. The majority of the books included in the display and available at for checkout at nonfiction accounts from people who experienced drug or alcohol addiction or grew up seeing the effects of addiction on their loved ones. These include Vice President Vance’s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy and David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy about his son’s struggles with addition.

The one fiction title on display is Barbara Kingsolver’s 2023 Pulitzer Prize winning Demon Copperhead. This is the one I have most recently read as it was the Adult Book Club’s March title. At the time I was very interested in how it compared to the book after which Kingsolver modeled it: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Having since listened to the Copperfield, I can answer, “Brilliantly.” While the nonfiction stories are also heart wrenching, Kingsolver is able to zoom out and use fictional characters and setting, both time and place, to hit home how and why so many people became addicted to opioids in the 1990’s. She’s also able to mix recreational and prescription as a reminder that not all addiction is the result of poor choices.

Four of the books have also been made into movies or short series including Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy with Glenn Close and Amy Adams and Dopesick by Beth Macy which Hulu released in 2021 with Michaael Keaton. Beautiful Boy starring Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle with Brie Larson and Woody Harrelson are more widely available and can be checked out at the library.

Reading Now: Ghost by Jason Reynolds and A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Listening to Now: Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (Back to the PBS list. I took a break last week for a Libby hold.)