I was 13 when the O.J. Simpson trial verdict was announced. It’s my only clear memory of the trial: my math teacher halting class so we could watch the verdict. My parents were purposely avoiding the case, so I knew very little about it (I don’t know how they did it, as much as this case saturated the media). When the jury declared him not guilty, I didn’t think much of it. Guilty, not guilty–I was too young to have ever seen Simpson play football, so […]
Going Home
Last summer, as part of my job as a health educator, I visited a woman at her home who had recently given birth. Newborn tests showed that the baby may have had a serious hemoglobin disorder. The woman spoke no English, and in fact her native language was spoken by such a small population that it had taken a lot of work to find an interpreter, who I had on speaker phone. At one point I asked the interpreter to define hemoglobin, explain that her […]
Best of Wives and Best of Women
I’m not a huge fan of literary fiction. I find it depressing, usually. Why are the characters always so desperate, and desperately unhappy? Why do they always have such depressing, gross sex lives, and why, WHY must books of literary fiction always contain a description of just how unappealing the protagonist’s body is? I mean, I live in a human body. I’m aware that most human bodies are very flawed. Do I have to read about Lotto’s stomach flab, and the way Mathilde’s finger can […]
My Last Chance to Feel Human
I’m not sure how to review this book. For those who don’t know (am I the only one who never had to read this in high school?), the first half is an account of Frankl’s time in concentration camps during World War II, while the second half discusses in more detail the psychotherapy that Frankl developed, logotherapy. And now that I’ve summarized it, I still don’t know how to proceed from here. I don’t think this book can be reviewed in the traditional sense–I certainly don’t want […]
Fault Lines
This book was a huge disappointment. I’m a public health nerd, and my standards for a book about infectious disease is pretty low. Rising Plague didn’t meet them. The book starts with an introduction to multi-drug resistant bacteria, which is illustrated with stories of real patients Dr. Spellberg has treated, and then moves into an exploration of the pharmaceutical industry, and the barriers to creating new antibiotics. This section was pretty successful. The patient case studies are interesting, and I learned quite a bit about pharmaceutical companies, […]
Five minutes looking in his eyes, we all knew he was broken pretty bad
Reading an Anne Tyler book is like snuggling into your warm bed when it’s raining and you have nowhere to be. There are no Big Bads, no scary, suspenseful moments, and no dramatic confrontations. Her books feel like a snapshot of the characters’ lives, which are mostly very ordinary. I adore them. The Accidental Tourist is the story of Macon Leary, a middle-aged man who writes travel guides for businessmen (and since it was written in 1985, they are indeed guides for businessmen, not businesspeople). His son Ethan was […]