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Sometimes it's a good idea to avoid reading any critique of a book before diving into it.

F'rinstance. The Lord of the Rings: I'd read somewhere that one of Tolkien's objectives was to write a long, rambling pseudo-history.

And I did indeed find the first and second books long and rambling, with payoffs far and few. Never got beyond the first third of the second book. Had I not read the critique, I probably would have figured that it was just my impression that the book was deliberately long (instead of the author simply letting the story find its own length) and I would have made the effort to finish all three.

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Then you were misinformed.

After I finish IMMORTAL LAST WORDS: HISTORY'S MOST MEMORABLE DYING REMARKS, DEATHBED DECLARATIONS AND FINAL FAREWELLS by Terry Breverton I'm very excited to start THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot.  Read a ton of great reviews and the description sounds fascinating:

"Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa.  She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells - taken without her knowledge in 1951 - became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping and more.  Henrietta's cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance.  This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing: of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew."

Really looking forward to starting it.