Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Five Days At Memorial by Sheri Fink



   
  Life working at a hospital is a vocation. Only the dedicated should do it.
   In every hospital the doctors and nurses have an obligation to maintain the standards set. Sometimes this contract is tested. It was during Hurricane Katrina.
   They should have been ready for it—the hurricane. They should have known the water would rise and the electricity would fail. They should have known supplies would be strained.
   Sometimes things happen and people die who shouldn’t.
   You shouldn’t have to ask for sainthood under pressure.  Yet most of us expect too much from our caretakers and then we bring charges against them if they don’t act as we have been prepared to expect.
   Fink, who has both an MD and  PhD, has written an account of five days under pressure and the outcome.
   When it was over, the blame started and the charges of murder were circulated. It was investigated and court action was brought against some doctors.
   I was sent this book without cost from blogging for books.com to be reviewed. I was not required to give a positive review.
   All view points are mine and don’t reflect those of the publisher. I am responsible for them all.

Monday, March 14, 2016

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel




  Every year for the past 14 years The Santa Monica community has held what has come to be known as Santa Monica Reads. This is a time when the library chooses a book the general public will be reading and discussing for a period of time.
   This year the book is of the genre science fiction. It takes place sometime in the future when the world is being invaded by a strain of virus referred to as the Georgia flu. Not everyone is killed but the world is altered.
   The story centers on a female called Kirsten Raymonde yet is told in the third person. It is layered as it moves between time and characters. It always returns to Kirsten who at the start of the story is seen as a young child playacting in King Lear. She is part of a group called the Symphony. As the story develops we are carried along as she strives to understand what has happened.
   The story is a search motif or maybe a quest.
   The story is told in both the present and the future covering a long stretch of time.
   The title Station Eleven refers to a place where life can start over, a place of rescue.
   The story appears to be not an optimistic one. A strain of flu sweeps through the world. Societies are broken up. Those left are trying to find each other to start over.
   But it ends in hope as a new community is seen through a spy glass-- Their station eleven.

This Is Awkward by Sammy Rhodes



   
There are moments when you feel awkward. It seems you want to mention something but it just doesn’t seem to be the time or place to do so. You feel there is a gap between what you actually are and what you should be.
   You struggle to hide it.
   There are some subjects you feel should not be discussed in public. These subjects include divorce, depression, and pornography. And those were just a few.
   This book is published by Thomas Nelson and is written by a campus minister so it covers issues most young people face.
   Rhodes gently handles with humor subjects that most often are not handled in public. It took humility to do so.
   The area of the pornography addiction often is not spoken about. It needed to be aired. Rhodes does a good service by including it. He tells it like it is. For someone from the millennial generation he is okay.
   Rhodes is a big presence on the Internet and has written for the Huffington Report, Salon and Christianity Today. So he knows how to write. He connects well with his readers.
   This book was sent to me without cost by booklookbloggers.com to be reviewed. There was under no  obligation to give a positive review and I was allowed to express my own opinion.