by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 20, 2022 | LEARN: Medical Memoir, RESIST: Social Justice
Thomas Fisher wears many hats in his new book, The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER. He’s a writer, physician, and commentator. All in all, he blends the various roles well and creates a compelling narrative. But I found it more...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 25, 2022 | LEARN: Chronic Illness
First, Meghan O’Rourke bares her soul about chronic illness in her 2022 book, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness. And second, she analyzes how US medical care fails patients with difficult to diagnose chronic illnesses. This is two parts...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 19, 2022 | RELAX: Memoir
There’s nothing like sinking into a satisfying essay based memoir. Whether it’s following a cult survivor or a famous Hollywood star, slipping under another person’s skin is one of my favorite bookish pleasures. And sometimes memoirists step away from the simple...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 12, 2022 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Fiona Murphy focuses her lyrical memoir, The Shape of Sound, on her experience with hearing and deafness. We follow her memories of childhood up until the present. So, we learn about her ongoing denial of being deaf in one ear. She analyzes how and why she hid her...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 7, 2021 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Cancer touched the life of Rebecca Whitehead Munn at an early age. Together with a wide circle of cancer patients and family members, she created All of Us Warriors: Cancer Stories of Survival and Loss. As often happens with cancer and other illnesses, this group of...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 12, 2021 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Nicole Bell tells her story of a thriving marriage unexpectedly disrupted in What Lurks in the Woods: Struggle and Hope in the Midst of Chronic Illness. Once I started it, I couldn’t put it down. Bell and her husband have two young kids. She lands a dream job, they...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 19, 2021 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Renée Nicholson writes about two different parts of her life in Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness. Initially, she’s the young dancer making sense of competition, instructor corrections, and visions of the future. As the essays progress, Nicholson...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 7, 2021 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Michele Harper, M.D. opens her heart in a memoir about her experiences in medicine, The Beauty in Breaking. But this book is more than that. It’s part meditation on finding herself amid divorce, moving to a new city, and finding peace in yoga and stillness. She’s also...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 23, 2021 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Ruth Coker Burks writes about her experiences caring for HIV/AIDS patients in All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South. She wasn’t a nurse or other health care provider. She was just a young woman with a big heart and buckets...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 8, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha wrote What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City to tell what happened in Flint, Michigan. But it’s not just her story. It’s the story of her clinic, her city, her state, and her country. And they are...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 5, 2020 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Casey Schwartz writes a memoir and social history mash up in Attention, A Love Story. She’s a thirty-something woman who started using Adderal, a drug to treat ADHD, in college. But she took it without being diagnosed. It’s just one of those things college kids do,...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 4, 2019 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Dr. Brendan Reilly creates a gripping memoir, One Doctor, by balancing several elements. As a hospitalist, a doctor working strictly with patients admitted to hospital, he details individual cases. At the same time, he reflects on how the cases affect him beyond the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 17, 2019 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
In No Apparent Distress, Rachel Pearson writes a riveting account of her time in medical school. She’s especially focused on her work at a student-run charity medical clinic in Galveston, TX. Given everything happening these days along the Texas border, it’s even more...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 12, 2018 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Porochista Khakpour spends much of her book, Sick: A Memoir, talking about relationships. Sometimes it’s her parents or girlfriends. But more often it’s the men in her life. I’ve seen reviewers bemoan this. But here’s what I think. A single young woman, battling...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 10, 2018 | LEARN: Everything Else
To learn what the latest Michael Pollan book, How to Change Your Mind, is about just check out its subtitle: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. Pollan creates an epic book. It’s part...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 6, 2018 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Abby Norman tells her often harrowing story with grace in Ask Me About My Uterus. She’s had to make her way through life in pain, and mostly alone. I’m in awe of her courage and fortitude! Norman spent her childhood with an absent father, and a functionally absent...
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