Sunday, August 30, 2009

What I'm reading (The Farewell to Reading Rainbow Edition)



Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog


As it has been widely reported and blogged about that after 26 years Reading Rainbow is no longer going to be making new episodes! I can't say that it had a profound effect on me, but I appreciate a show that promotes reading for fun. It is something that I want to encourage in my own daughter, so to see an ally fall is sad. Thankfully she is a reader and is just getting old enough to start the Harry Potter books. That should keep her busy for a few years.

Speaking of reading for enjoyment, my reading list just increased by one book. Beloved has been set aside for now, hopefully to be picked up later. Gina suggested a new book to read in conjunction with my entering the medical field and working toward nursing school. This afternoon I started reading Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande.

I read the Introduction this afternoon and I'm hooked.

Medicine is, I have found, a strange and in many ways disturbing business. The stakes are high, the liberties taken tremendous. We drug people, put needles and tubes into them, manipulate their chemistry, biology, and physics, lay them unconscious and open their bodies up to the world. We do so out of abiding confidence in our know-how as a professional. What you find when you get in close, however...is how messy, uncertain, and also surprising medicine turns out to be.
See what I'm saying? I've got to go. I've got reading to do and report back on later.

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