Recently Read

The Boston Girl, by Anita Diamant.  This is a lovely fictional memoir of a Jewish girl born in Boston to immigrant parents in the early 1900s. Written as a conversation to her granddaughter, it's a beautiful story. I enjoyed reading life lessons through the eyes of the main character, Addie Baum, and I particularly enjoyed it since it was based here in my part of the world.

In the Woods, by Tana French.  In 1984, three friends went into the woods to play. When they didn't come home for dinner, a search began, and only one kid was found - Rob Ryan. Standing against a tree with blood-filled shoes, he had no memory of what happened to him and his friends. Rob moved away, changed his name, grew up, and became a police detective. Twenty years later, a girl was murdered in the same woods, and Rob was assigned to the case. Sounds intriguing, right?  I was pulled right into this murder-mystery, anticipating a resolution that never really came, and although I was entertained along the way, I was ultimately disappointed and sad.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande.  I must confess, I've developed something of a crush on Dr. Gawande. A general surgeon at Brigham & Women's hospital and a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, he has written several books and articles. I love his honesty, his beautiful writing, and his genuine desire to dive deep into a subject. This book is not a happy one - nobody wants to talk or think about dying - but it's an incredibly important one. He uses a lot of personal examples, including his own father's death, to convey his message about the role of medicine in our last phase of life. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I would encourage everyone to read it, or at the very least, watch the documentary about it.