Reading list

Since leaving Vanguard at the end of March, I have read nine books, most of them more than 600 pages each. I'm a slow reader, so this is a big deal for me. The last one was Cutting for Stone, recommended by my friend Judy Wilson. It was so original, so finely drawn, so shocking, so real that I thought for sure it was thinly veiled biography. Wrong.

I will be passing this book on to my nephew, who is a medical student. The book is written from the vantage point of a young boy, and then young man, who beomes a surgeon. It covers such ground as Ethiopian history, Indian culture, being a twin, dealing with grief, medical ethics, and how to make sense of the mixture of good and bad things that befall us. I may have to read it again to extract the wisdom that is woven into its intricate plot.

(Photos from our recent west coast trip are in posts beginning "Cliffs of Moher" and ending "Get the Frack out of Ireland.")
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