IT’S MY FIRST CANNONBALL! And also my first time participating, so I’m PRETTY PROUD OF MYSELF! This really feels like an accomplishment. I met my goal while carrying a full college courseload, parenting a special needs toddler, being the wife to a pre-med student who spends 70 hours a week at work or school, and moving to a new home. I did it! I’m so excited. Like seriously SO excited. Anyway, it’s fitting that I hit my cannonball with a medical memoir, since I’m pretty […]
Another problematic medical memoir.
This is the second problematic medical memoir I’ve read in as many weeks. Dr. Austin is an ER doctor, and his book is probably 70% standard stuff for these kinds of books – patient anecdotes and ruminations on the meaning of things. I’ve read…a lot of those books. The other 30% focuses on the impact of shift work and burnout on his family life. The 70% I loved. It was reasonably well-written, and you’d have to go out of your way to make the […]
90% great, 10% WHAT?!
Bedside Manners is a series of essays/vignettes about the encounters between doctors and patients, mostly. All but a couple are clearly intended to be true and from the perspective of Dr. Watts, who is a gastroenterologist. (The couple that seem to be about some other doctor are weird.) His writing is prosey and nice, and stories fly by, and the subject matter is surprisingly interesting. (Not that I’m surprised that the 6,049,284th medical memoir I’ve read was interesting. But he’s a gastroenterologist.) Are you hearing […]

