Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Best Books Ever (So Far)

Blog Challenge #27
I love to get my People magazine every week. I like to follow the shenanigan's of the stars but the movie, TV and book reviews are great too. For this post (blog challenge #27) I am going to list 5 of my favorite books and why I have (or will) read them more than once. Enjoy!


Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medial School
by Melvin Conner, MD - 1987


I read this book when I was in nursing school and wondering if I had made the wrong choice. I wanted so desperately to go to medical school but didn't want to give up the parts of life that would not fit into such an education (like being a mom of three small children). In the end I made the right choice, at least for me. 

About this book...

Dr. Conner writes about his experience in medical school. At the time he started he was in his mid 30's and already a professor of anthropology and a researcher. Through the eyes of a more mature and experiences person, he writes about his personal experience as a medical student. He tells of how he was taught to detach from patients and, in the end, decides not to go into a residency program and returns to  anthropology.  



Excerpt...
As I surveyed this strange, otherworldly scene my mind turned, for the thousandth time, to the long course of events that had led me from my professional office - where I had followed my thoughts and read and taught and talked quietly with students and colleagues, surrounded by old books – to this world of pain and urgency, of noise and barked orders, of injury, of healing, and all too frequently, of death.
  

The Testament
by John Grisham -  1999

The Testament
It is because of this book that I added a trip to the Pantanal to my bucket list and became obsessed with joining the Peace Corp. The later has passed but I am going to find out more about what is offered through Cross Cultural Solutions. 

About this book...

This is a really great story about a self-made billionaire, a litigator from Washington DC and a woman who gave her life to God and went to live and work with a tribe of Indians in Brazil. It is an adventure that follows the lives of those three and others that intertwine their lives. 




Excerpt...
[she] lived in a hut or a lean-to, and slept on a bed she’d build herself, and cooked over a fire, and ate food she’d grown or trapped or killed, and taught Bible stories to the children and the Gospel to the adults, and knew nothing and certainly cared nothing for the events and worries and pressures of the world. She was very content. Her faith sustained her.

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