Blurb: Think you have a good memory? Think again. Memories are our most cherished possesions. We rely on them every day of our lives. They make us who we are. True, we can all admit to having suffered occasional memory lapses, such as entering a room and immediately forgetting why or suddenly being unable to recall the name of someone we’ve met dozens of times. But what if we have the potential for more profound errors of memory?
The fragility of our identity and why nostalgia is better than our past
I listened to this audiobook, read by Siri Steinmo, at the right time – while I was back in the town I grew up in for a part of my medical “electives”. Growing up here wasn’t easy, at least not for me, but coming back there were many beautiful feelings and also a longing to go back in time. I guess it’s just bitter-sweet to remember the good things and dream what could have been or to see who we (probably) were and who we became. Memory was already something I discussed a lot with friends and siblings. It fascinates me how different memories can be and Dr. Shaw explains how those disparities come to be.
Combined with the interesting topic of medical errors the book opened up so many possible research questions too. How much of the presentation of a resident or intern to higher up doctors is actually the information the patient shared with them and how much is a completion of a picture with information we’ve experienced before in similar situations. How much of that which the patient remembers actually happened and how does it impact our treatment of a certain situation?
I guess this will be one of those books I’ll get as a hard copy for my library since it’s a well researched book on an interesting and important topic. Also I’m really interested in the footnotes and references which I missed out on with this (very nicely read) audiobook.
Reading this book I feel like there is a certain type of person who’s perfect for sex work (as there is for most jobs).
Someone who doesn’t like human touch, doing menial tasks for people while balancing emotional involvement and managing complex therapeutical procedures probably shouldn’t be a nurse. And someone who doesn’t love themselves, doesn’t like people and isn’t curious about their intimate proclivities, but rather gets attached quickly, probably isn’t cut out for being a callgirl. Of course one should like sex – in many varieties – too.
Appart from the sex, being curious about the intimate lives of people and how they work, while not getting attached also seems perfect for the field the author studied: forensic science.
I got the book because I loved the Secret Diary of a Callgirl with Billie Piper. I was curious how much the production invented and how much was based on the blogposts of the author. To be honest I felt Billie Pipers character was more accepting of the different kinks than Belle du Jour in the books. Actually I liked the TV-series’ character better than the one in the book. It’s possible that something got lost in translation, because blogposts were made into a book and the mediums don’t work in the same way.
The book reads like an entertaining first draft that could or should be arranged in one or more story arcs for a satisfying read. There are some nice thoughts in it, some glimpses into an interesting but yet shallow or egocentric character. Some reviews show how little the book was able to convey that different forms of sex are just that – sex; “…she’s willing to be degraded for money.” For me the character never felt degraded and while some acts may look degrading from a subjectives perspective, they might not be at all. They might be empowering from the perspective of the people involved. But the authors offhand accounts just don’t communicate the joy or even uncaring nature she has in such situations. There’s no reflection about most things or the things she does (especially to her ex-boyfriends) and therefore everything feels shallow, as if there’s some depth missing.
That’s okay for a blog (although I probably wouldn’t read it), but it lacks in a book.
As for the critique that she’s glamourising sex-work, I don’t think this sentence does nothing of that kind:
There are downsides to unpaid casual sex, of course. Aren’t there always? By engaging in truly random, one-night attachments, you open yourself up to stalking, relationships and all other manner of sexually transmitted ills.
And sometimes there are even “good” sentences as inspiration from the readers. Take it from a sex-expert, she must know:
Sexy is the result of being pulled together and comfortable in your skin. Holding your stomach in when your clothes are off is not fuckable. Slapping your ample behind and inviting him to ride the wobble is.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Certainly a book that shows the ambivalence, problems and challenges of psychology, especially today. We need to protect us, but also not at every cost, there are some people, that just won’t fit into society and others that fit charmingly well, but are dangerous. Jon Ronson went on a journey from denialists of psychologic illnesses to people who overdiagnose children who are simply reacting to a sick world. I think this book is very important, especially for people working in medicine, child care, law or media. Esentially it’s interesting for everyone and I enjoyed it thorougly. If you’re unsure, check out Jon Ronsons Ted Talk on the subject. That’s where I got hooked.
Entertaining and thoughtprovoking. Also reminds you of the fact that most enigmatic and mystical things are just as boring, shallow and potentially dangerous, as you never hoped they are. People just seem to search a meaning for their tedious unconsequential lives, spice it up with conspirancies, to give reasons to the seemingly random things that happen to them. And the easiest way is to have tangible culprits. Other people. Them!
I got this book as an uncorrected proof from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I did not read the first issue of the Analog Novels, Bandwith, but I will check it out after I’ve read Borderless.
ISBN 9781503904729
Blurb
Information is power, and whoever controls the feed rules the world in this all-too-plausible follow-up to the science fiction thriller Bandwidth.
Exiled from Washington after a covert operation gone wrong, Diana is building a new life as a freelance spy, though her obsessive secrecy is driving away the few friends and allies she can count on. When she’s hired to investigate the world’s leading techno capitalist, she unknowingly accepts an assignment with a dark ulterior purpose. Navigating a labyrinth of cutouts and false fronts, Diana discovers a plot to nationalize the global feed.
As tech and politics speed toward a catastrophic reckoning, Diana must reconcile the sins of her past with her dreams of tomorrow. How she deploys the secrets in her arsenal will shape the future of a planet on the brink of disaster. Doing the right thing means risking everything to change the rules of the game. But how much is freedom really worth?
Source: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/142666
Opinion
First off – I wouldn’t have guessed that the Author isn’t female. The main character is written realistically, palpable and very rounded.
I wanted to read the book for some good near future sci-fi and an adventure. I got so much more out of it. Borderless essentially shows you the story of an immigrated citizen with a complicated past, that has to question her way of loving and protecting her new home – be it her own little sanctuary or the United States of America. You follow Diana through her journey and meet every side-character through her eyes. The writing is beautiful and it brings the different relationships to live.
Knowing that you were being manipulated didn’t stop it from working.
Besides Dag, I got a good sense of the people in her life and I’m looking forward to meeting him in Bandwith.
[…] sketches capturing the multiyear fire […] his enthusiasm was aedent, fueled by the guilt.
Eliot Peper seems to write very descriptively but less with adjectives and more through actions, which I liked a lot. The appearances of people seem secondary unless something is described in context of an action or a feeling it evokes. It’s an interesting story that feels like you’re slowly unearthing various layers of the story, the people and the ploys. While it is Sci-Fi everything feels realistic and I enjoyed seeing a catheter using agent who’s human and doesn’t go rogue with kung-fu skills.
Just like that Diana’s plan evaporated. She wanted to come back with a firm rebuttal, explain how she’d thought through every contingency. But the fact was, she hadn’t.
I joined her in a journey, starting out with eager nervousness, through all the turmoils of present and past and in the end was moved by few unremarkable words in a melancholic world, full of shit and beauty. Because life isn’t a fairy tale, but it writes the best stories. And the stories of this characters are rooted in real human emotions in all their complexity. Please get yourself some tissues for the epilogue.
Quotes
Our secrets define us.
Maybe she should have picked up more of that Dutch pragmatism. On the other hand, was pragmatism that had once rationalized the transatlantic slave trade worth cultivating?
There were few currencies as valuable as lies of omission.
But the people who used tools were the ones in charge, not the people who made them.
You have more borders and treaties and NDAs in your head than the fucking United Nations.
Sloppiness invited chaos. But maybe chaos was exactly what she needed.
America peaked in the final years of the twentieth century, its enemies defeated and its strength uncontested. My rule of thumb is that if a blowjob constitutes a national crisis, then you’re at the very top of your game.
The relentless metamorphoses could be painful and disturbing, but they also reflected a world in which change was the only constant.
Diana was a refugee again, a refugee from the world she’d built, from the life she’d created for herself.
“I was protecting you.” Her whisper was barely audible.
“I never asked for your protection – all I’ve ever asked for is your trust.”
We all have to start somewhere. Otherwise what’s the point?
I had the opportunity to read and review this through Netgalley and chose to do it
since I really liked the cover. Also her name is Thummler^^ Sounds like a bad tumbler pun. =)
Blurb
Marjorie Glatt feels like a ghost. A practical thirteen year old in charge of the family laundry business, her daily routine features unforgiving customers, unbearable P.E. classes, and the fastidious Mr. Saubertuck who is committed to destroying everything she’s worked for.
Wendell is a ghost. A boy who lost his life much too young, his daily routine features ineffective death therapy, a sheet-dependent identity, and a dangerous need to seek purpose in the forbidden human world.
When their worlds collide, Marjorie is confronted by unexplainable disasters as Wendell transforms Glatt’s Laundry into his midnight playground, appearing as a mere sheet during the day. While Wendell attempts to create a new afterlife for himself, he unknowingly sabotages the life that Marjorie is struggling to maintain.
Sheets illustrates the determination of a young girl to fight, even when all parts of her world seem to be conspiring against her. It proves that second chances are possible whether life feels over or life is over. But above all, it is a story of the forgiveness and unlikely friendship that can only transpire inside a haunted laundromat.
Opinion
Have you ever seen a sad ghost? Because I have and it breaks my heart that someone forgot him. I read this graphic novel in one go, I was so captivated. Brenna uses beautiful colors and still the panels can show you the depressing boredom, the sad day to day life, making it palpable without words. A skill of show don’t tell that many movie directors don’t have. The main character seems to be multi-dimensional, although there isn’t much description and is unpretentious, but still a fighter. There’s a lot of subtext and room for wonderful interpretations as well as some puns. A simple, heart-warming and tear-inducing story that seems a wonderful fantasy.
Quotes
She died this past spring, and then Dad sort of did, too. He’s still 100% opaque, but slightly less visible.
Kevin will probably get new shoes, right? ‘Cause he has a mom.
Grown-ups are skilled at making terrible things seem great.
I picked up this book after enjoying a newer novel by Anthony O’Neill: The Dark Side, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Somehow I “get” his characters, they feel real and flawed in realistic ways. So I looked up what else he wrote and stumbled upon The Lamplighter. Since it’s set a) in Edinburgh and b) in the Victorian age I had to read it.
Blurb An atmospheric thriller set in nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Anthony O’Neill’s elegant, darkly masterful novel is full of psychological suspense and first-rate horror. Evelyn is a clever orphan at the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls. Enchanted by a cheerful lamplighter who fires the streetlamp outside her window each evening, she mesmerizes the other girls with flights of fancy. In a time before Freudian awareness of sexuality and the subconscious mind, such tales are forbidden by the institute’s governor, who warns Evelyn to cease her nocturnal storytelling. Evelyn defies him — and is cast out of the orphanage and sacrificed to a shadowy figure claiming to be her long-lost father. Who is this man, and why does he lock Evelyn away in a hunting lodge? Years later, the mutilated body of a professor of ecclesiastical law turns up on one of Edinburgh’s finest streets; the grave of a famous colonel is ravaged; a shady entrepreneur is slaughtered while dashing for a train; and a retired lighthouse keeper is ripped to shreds while walking his dog — all this after Evelyn, now a young woman, has reappeared in the city. What connects the victims? And what of Evelyn, anguished and appealing, who repeatedly claims to have dreamed the murders in great detail — each time blaming a mysterious “lamplighter”? Leading the official investigation is Carus Groves, a conceited yet effective police inspector desperate to cap his unremarkable career with a sensational case. Heading up the unofficial investigation is a disillusioned professor of logic and metaphysics, Thomas McKnight, and his assistant, Joseph Canavan, a strapping young gravedigger. Using reason, intuition, philosophy, and luck, these men race to solve the murders and unveil the source of Evelyn’s torment, and in so doing penetrate the very gates of Hell.
Opinion The writing is different that in the Dark Side, because it seems adapted to the time in which the novel is set. There are many! words I haven’t encountered yet, because I’m not a native english speaker and also O’Neil seems to have used quite a lot of “old timey” and Scottland specific language. But using my eReaders dictionary that was no problem and I actually enjoyed learning new stuff (although I suspect I won’t be remembering much of it). The novel feels like a bunch of loose threads getting woven together and then totally change direction. There’s a sense of mystery and wonder to the way he tells the story. And I was often on the verge of being pulled in, into pre-enlightenment superstitions for the sake of the book, as well as doubting if that really was, where the story was going and expecting a scientific twist.
The characters although not described in much detail, feel realistic and three-dimensional. Looking back there was a good mix between the thoughts of the characters and their actions, that made them palpable.
There are quite a few philosophic discussions in the book, dealing with the difference between medieval and enlightenment times, woven in between the crime story that takes one to many different places. Having been to Edinburgh certainly helped with my imagination, knowing which streets the characters, and especially Evelyn wandered.
There is no romance (which I was happy about), there’s only one female character and three main male characters and one female sidecharacter, but it works, especially in that time. I didn’t find it especially horrific or horrific at all, being honest, so I would not categorise it as a thriller. It’s a very special crime story somehow, in my opinion.
Quotes There are soooo many good quotes, but most of them hint at some things that happen or are in the twists themselves, so I just selected a few that I hope won’t spoil anything.
It was a terrible and exquisite thing, to have a heart that was not a muscle but a wound.
Such men, riven with self-doubt, were of course vulnerable to fantastic theories and fabulous missions, and equally at risk of driving deeper into self-destruction.
Blood is like French perfume to the Edinburgh hussy, Carus.
Have you ever stopped to consider how much time even the most unimaginative man each day spends, neither willingly nor unwillingly, in the world of his imagination?
It could well be the case that the last thing a man sees is not that which his eyes settle upon, but that which his imagination furnishes for him. It could be argued quite reasonably, in any case, that this imagination is what really constitutes a man’s soul.
We consciously impose limits on our own thoughts and settle into an expedient system of simplifications and archetypes. We willingly stamp archetypes even upon ourselves, to fall into the world we have constructed out of easy recognitions and the disinclination for complexity. The unconscious, however, remains unsated and frequently rebellious.
“And of the orphanage? What do you think of when I mention it now?” She considered. “I think of a parcel tightly bound.” “A parcel? Not a cage?” “Cages,” Evelyn said, “have air.”
What does it take to be good at something in which failure is so easy, so effortless?
I bought this ebook some time ago and I should have read it sooner. Being someone who often doubts themselves and the path I’ve chosen – not for lacking love for medicine, but rather second guessing if I’m the right person for the job – I was quite familiar with many questions Atul Gawande raised.
In this book, he points out three points one could and should observe if one wants to do better.
DILIGENCE – DOING RIGHT – INGENUITY
Blurb The struggle to perform well is universal: each one of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives are on the line with every decision. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable. Gawande’s gripping stories of diligence, ingenuity, and what it means to do right by people take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to labour and delivery rooms in Boston, to a polio outbreak in India, and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on modern medicine, and recounts the astoundingly contentious history of hand washing. And as in all his writing, Gawande gives us an inside look at his own life as a practising surgeon, offering a searingly honest firsthand account of work in a field where mistakes are both unavoidable and unthinkable. At once unflinching and compassionate, Better is an exhilarating journey narrated by arguably the best nonfiction doctor-writer around (Salon). Gawande’s investigation into medical professionals and how they progress from merely good to great provides rare insight into the elements of success, illuminating every area of human endeavour.
– via @goodreads
Opinion I’ve enjoyed the book quite a lot and read it in three days. It’s filled with stories about the three things that help us to do better. Two of them, the one about the polio vaccination efforts of the WHO and the one about the MRSA hygiene problem were particularly interesting to me. It reminded me of good hand hygiene and makes me take our hygiene experts even more seriously, which – if we’re being honest – most doctors don’t do.
But some doctors believe in homoeopathy, without knowing what it’s really all about – too. Of course, these stories are uplifting and devastating at the same time. It reminds you that medicine is a permanent struggle. It’s never done. Unless of course, we adjust our goals.
Adjusting your goals, away from perfection and to more effective and realistic ends can actually push us. This was shown in the story about war surgeons. And it reminded me for one about that great documentary Frontline Medicine with Michael Mosley – as well as something a palliative doctor once said:
If your goal is to defeat the illness, you’ll often lose – if you change your view and make it your goal to give your patient the best care possible, you often win.
By the best care, he meant taking reality and a persons wishes into account. You’ll probably lose the fight against death with a polydrug using patient who has a GI bleed and doesn’t want to live anymore. But if you take him and the situation into account you might just give him some dignity and a good death.
All in all the book was exhilarating and giving me strength, reminding me that not seeing everything rosy isn’t necessarily bad, but can actually make you a better person, because you strive for more.
Quotes
In medicine, our task is to cope with illness and to enable every human being to lead a life as long and free of frailty as science will allow. The steps are often uncertain. The knowledge to be mastered is both vast and incomplete.
As a doctor, you go into this work thinking it is all a matter of canny diagnosis, technical prowess, and some ability to empathize with people. But it is not, you soon find out. In medicine, as in any profession, we must grapple with systems, resources, circumstances, people—and our own shortcomings, as well.
The second challenge is to do right. Medicine is a fundamentally human profession.
Betterment is a perpetual labor. The world is chaotic, disorganized, and vexing, and medicine is nowhere spared that reality.
At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only according to their own arbitrary rhythm. The notion that human caring, the effort to do better for people, might make a difference can seem hopelessly naïve. But it isn’t.
Reading this book I feel like there is a certain type of person who’s perfect for sex work (as there is for most jobs).
