Book Review: Playing Doctor Part Two: Residency

January 10, 2022 Leave a Comment

Title: PLAYING DOCTOR; PART TWO: RESIDENCY: (Blundering along with imposter syndrome)
Author: John Lawrence
Genre: Autobiography, non-fiction
Rating: 4,5 stars
Purchase: Amazon

Ready to learn how (not) to be a doctor?
Well, neither was John.
John’s adventures in medical training continue with this insightful, often hilarious, self-deprecating medical memoir of bumbling into residency with a severe case of imposter syndrome. This second part in the series brings John’s unique, irreverent and candid med-school storytelling to the world of residency training.
Initially, John penned email blasts while being held captive on-call nights. His descriptions of the escapades, mishaps, disorder, and terror that surrounded his training, led several friends to enquire if he has broken into the hospital pharmacy. Eventually, someone asked to publish the stories, so John replied that he’d write down the whole adventure of becoming a doctor from medical school through residency.

Playing Doctor Part Two: Residency, is a medical memoir written by John Lawrence, that focuses on John’s residency training. The books talks about John’s connection to his patients, about the situations he finds himself in while practicing medicine – sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes surprising – and he always tells these stories with an undercurrent of humor that really makes this book stand out from others.

I really liked John’s honesty about the good and not-so-good parts of the job, and his ability to shoulder through it all, no matter what happens. It’s an honest, insightful and inspiring memoir that I think should be a must-read for all aspiring doctors out there.

 

 

Filed Under: Non-Fiction Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: The Girl From Scorpions Pass

October 21, 2018 Leave a Comment

Title: The Girl From Scorpions Pass
Author: Miri Furstenberg
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Autobiography, Historical
Rating: 5 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Five-year-old Miri is left for dead in a brutal terror attack that kills her parents!

On a desert night a little girl lies shivering under a dead body near a bullet riddled bus too frightened to cry. The violated body of her mother is strewn nearby. Her father, the bus driver, sits slumped over the wheel; his blood has mingled with that of twelve dead passengers. She cannot see her older brother.

Rescued by soldiers hours later, the horror of that night remains locked in her heart…

A few hours later an army patrol stumbles onto the scene of what the morning newspapers will call “The Massacre at Scorpions Pass.” Miri Furstenberg was five-years-old, and sixty years would pass before she finds the courage to write about that horrible night.

Until its secrets and her amazing life story are finally revealed in these pages

Miri and the State of Israel were both born in 1948, and her story is bound together with evocative scenes from the country’s own. From Tel Aviv in the austere 1950’s, to the relative comfort of kibbutz life, helping unearth Masada, and serving in uniform during the Six Day War, the author’s vivid memories and stark self-reflection make riveting reading.

The Girl From Scorpions Pass begins with a tragic, dark story. Five-year-old Miri lay shivering under a dead body never a bullet-riddled bus. She was too scared to cry. Her father, the bus driver, was dead. Her mother wasalso murdered during the massacre. All passengers were dead. Her brother ended up in a coma during this terrible event. , which would later be deemed “The Scorpions Pass Massacre”.

Five years old, and already scarred like that, it took Miri sixty years to pen down her experiences of that dreadful night. Of course there’s a lot more the author describes in this book about her life, from describing life in Tel Aviv in the 1950s to her service during the Six Day War, and much more – but it all begins on that fateful, life-altering day.

It’s horrible to think about massacres such as this one, about terrible tragedies befalling people all over the world, and it’s even more terrible when it happens to people this young. I can’t even imagine. Reading this book will no doubt bring tears in your eyes; it even made me cry. The author has a lot of vevacity and courage, and her strength shows through every page of this book.

Filed Under: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Book Review: Heaven and Hell by Yair Dori

October 20, 2018 1 Comment

Title: Heaven and Hell: An Inspirational Biography of a Man’s Victory Against All Odds
Author: Yair Dori
Genre: Non-Fiction, Historical, Autobiography, Memoir
Rating: 5 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Yair’s heroic life story will inspire and transform you!

Yair’s generation suffered the Holocaust, and his story merges with that of the State of Israel. This autobiography is the living record of a generation, crisscrossed by the personal history of a family and the most intimate fibers of Yair’s being. It is an exemplary human response to dire straits. The recurrent theme “Run, Yair, run!” is repeated throughout the book.

Run with Yair as he confronts the unspeakable and emerges triumphant

And yes, Yair Dori ran! He kept on running with indefatigable spirit for the innocent victims of the Holocaust, the dreams of his suffering people, to maintain dignity in the worst conditions, and to overcome his near-fatal physical and emotional injuries. As Yair confronted his own mortality in an Egyptian prison, garnering the strength to grapple with the most atrocious circumstances, he remembered his father’s words: “Be worthy of your life and your death.” Yair’s response: “Heaven and Hell – I regret nothing!”.

In this autobiography, Heaven and Hell, Yair Dori describes his life as he was born in Argentina and then immigrated to Israel, believing that to be the only nation where his people, the Jewish people, could truly live freely and securely. He was then drafted into the Israeli army and served in an elite infantry brigade.

In 1970, in a bloody battle with Egyptian forces, Yair was injured severely and captured by the enemy. Spending 10 months in captivity in Egypt, he went through a harrowing ordeal. His right hand was amputated, he was left blinded in his left eye. Eventually, he managed to return to Israel as part of a prisoner exchange agreement. Yet, Yair did not lose spirit. Despite the hardships, he stayd strong – he studied philosophy, got married, had children.

This is an inspiring memoir about never giving up, about looking fear in the eye and overcoming it. Yair is a strong person, and it shows through every page of this book. The writing is sublime, pulling the reader in from the first page. The story is at time harrowing, at times heart-warming, but always inspiring.

Filed Under: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Mini-Reviews: Blackhouse, Ghost Boy, A Tale of Two Mommies

January 19, 2016 1 Comment

minireview

Time for some mini-reviews! What are mini-reviews, you ask? As the title suggests, these are short reviews, consisting of one paragraph tops, about a book. It’s a way to catch up on the books I’ve read a while ago, but never got around to reviewing.

The Blackhouse

Tite: The Blackhouse

Author: Peter May

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Rating: 4 stars

Purchase: Amazon

When a brutal murder on the Isle of Lewis bears the hallmarks of a similar slaying in Edinburgh, police detective Fin Macleod is dispatched north to investigate. But since he himself was raised on Lewis, the investigation also represents a journey home and into his past.

Review: Claustrophic, small town setting, a brooding detective haunted by the past, a brutal ritualistic murder, and excellent writing. All that mixes into a chilling, tense novel with a haunting climax. One of my favorites I read this year.

A Tale of Two Mommies

Title: A Tale of Two Mommies

Author: Vanita Oelschlager

Genre: Children’s Book, Picture Book

Rating: 4 stars

Purchase: Amazon

A Tale of Two Mommies is a beach conversation among three children. One boy asks another boy about having two mommies. A young girl listening in asks some questions too.
True to a child’s curiosity, practical questions follow. “Which mom is there when you want to go fishing? / Which mom helps out when Kitty goes missing?” To which he answers: “Mommy helps when I want to go fishing. / Both Mommies help when Kitty goes missing.”
A Tale of Two Mommies is intended for 4-8 year olds.
This book lets us look inside one non-traditional family, a same sex couple and their son. As the children talk, it’s clear this boy lives in a nurturing environment where the biggest issues are the everyday challenges of growing up.

Review: A cute book about a kid with two mommies. We don’t always think about the consequences for kids, and how tough it can be for them to explain to other kids that they have two mommies, or even two daddies, and this book explains in a fun, cute way. The illustrations look lovely too.

Ghost Boy

Title: Ghost Boy

Author: Martin Pistorius

Genre: Non-Fiction, Biography

Rating: 5 stars

Purchase: Amazon

They all thought he was gone. But he was alive and trapped inside his own body for ten years.
In January 1988 Martin Pistorius, aged twelve, fell inexplicably sick. First he lost his voice and stopped eating. Then he slept constantly and shunned human contact. Doctors were mystified. Within eighteen months he was mute and wheelchair-bound. Martin’s parents were told an unknown degenerative disease left him with the mind of a baby and less than two years to live.
Martin was moved to care centers for severely disabled children. The stress and heartache shook his parents’ marriage and their family to the core. Their boy was gone. Or so they thought.
Ghost Boy is the heart-wrenching story of one boy’s return to life through the power of love and faith. In these pages, readers see a parent’s resilience, the consequences of misdiagnosis, abuse at the hands of cruel caretakers, and the unthinkable duration of Martin’s mental alertness betrayed by his lifeless body.
We also see a life reclaimed—a business created, a new love kindled—all from a wheelchair. Martin’s emergence from his own darkness invites us to celebrate our own lives and fight for a better life for others.
Review: A young boy falls prey to a mysterious illness, and is put into a home for people with disabilities. He’s trapped inside his own body, and it takes years before a friendly nurse figures out he can communicate, and is a lot more intelligent than they gave him credit for. The book is harsh too, and not just a hopeful story. There’s rape and horrible abuse, all in one boy – and then man’s – fight against darkness. A heart-wrenching story that I’ll never forget.
Filed Under: Children's Books, Memoir, Mini-Reviews, Mystery and Suspense, Non-Fiction, Thrillers Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Book Review: Surviving the Angel of Death by Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri

May 4, 2014 Leave a Comment

18898968Title: Surviving the Angel of Death

Authors: Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri

Genre: Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Memoir

Age Group: Young Adult and older

Rating: 5 stars

Purchase: Amazon

Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Eva Mozes Kor was 10 years old when she arrived in Auschwitz. While her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, she and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man known as the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele’s twins were granted the privileges of keeping their own clothes and hair, but they were also subjected to sadistic medical experiments and forced to fight daily for their own survival, as most of the twins died as a result of the experiements or from the disease and hunger pervasive in the camp. In a narrative told with emotion and restraint, readers will learn of a child’s endurance and survival in the face of truly extraordinary evil. The book also includes an epilogue on Eva’s recovery from this experience and her remarkable decision to publicly forgive the Nazis. Through her museum and her lectures, she has dedicated her life to giving testimony on the Holocaust, providing a message of hope for people who have suffered, and working toward goals of forgiveness, peace, and the elimination of hatred and prejudice in the world.

I requested a copy of Surviving the Angel of Death, even though I was worried I might not be able to stomach it. But considering the source material, considering this is a real life account of what atrocities happened during World War I, I felt like I just had to read this. I’m glad I did.

Surviving the Angel of Death is a horrifying book. Some of the stories detailed in here…they made me squirm, made my stomach turn upside down, made me want to throw up. But at the same time, it deserves to be read just because of the stories it tells, so we know we should do whatever we can to never allow this to happen again.

Eva was ten years old when she arrived in Auschwitz. Her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, but Eva and her twin sisters, Miriam, were sent to the care of Dr. Josef Mengele, although “care” is the entirely wrong word here. They were forced to fight for their lives every single day ,and to witness the terrible experiments Dr. Mengele performed, not just on them, but on others – twins, dwarfs, pregnant women. What was truly inspiring about this book, was the girl’s strength. The things they could do in the face of danger, the horrors they could survive, their will to live. It was heart-wrenching, and heck, it damn near broke my heart to read this book.

The thought that people might still be going through something of the sort, even today, is horrible. We may deluce ourselves into thinking no one is getting tortured anywhere at this moment in time, or that we’ve somehow gotten rid of most of the evil in the world, but we must not kid ourselves. We must not stay blind for the horrors of this world.

This writing fits the audience – YA – and I can only imagine how hard it must’ve been to write a book of this caliber of horrendousness and make it suitable for a YA audience.

A testament to the courage of two young children, and to the power of hope.

Filed Under: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Book Tours: Book Spotlight The Ambitious Struggle

March 24, 2014 Leave a Comment

The Ambitious StruggleTitle: The Ambitious Struggle
Author: Yasin Kakande
Genre: Autobiography
Publisher: Florida Academic Press
Pages: 282

Purchase at AMAZON

The book includes many anecdotes about my work as a journalist in Dubai. Many readers might be unfamiliar with how the media operate in one of the world’s most progressive and economically developed nations. There are many similarities to mainstream media in other parts of the world but there also are some unique elements which emphasize just how precarious, fragile, and delicate the media’s professional commitments and ethics are amid the omnipresent shadows of press censorship and the opaque nature of official spokespersons who aggressively protect Dubai’s intricately constructed status quo. These tensions are most frequently observed in the day-to-day coverage of crime, business, public meetings and other routine events that constitute the bread-and-butter of local media throughout the world. Some of the most illuminating insights come from stories about immigrants, signaling themes that easily could apply to similar stories in virtually any other part of the world. In summary, the book explores many topics – how the coverage of crime and police matters, public health concerns (e.g., HIV and AIDS), racism and racial profiling, governmental accountability, corporate responsibility in accidents, and other reporting beats proceeds against a backdrop of tensions that pit an enlightened cosmopolitanism against the strict cultural, social, and religious mores closely associated with the region.

The book also seeks to cover several potentially dynamic market emphases that have become more visible recently among diverse groups of readers. One includes journalists and students who are morally courageous Muslim professionals and leaders advocating for press freedom and who are committed to challenging the limitations of political correctness, intellectual conformity, and censorship. Another focuses on immigration, ethnic and racial diversity, and multiculturalism in building responsible democracies. This is significant as an informative counterpoint to some mainstream media portrayals of the Muslim faith and its religious practices. Yet another focuses on Ugandan culture and the importance of education in breaking through difficult barriers preventing individuals from achieving economic mobility. Meanwhile, the book is ideal for others looking for different views other than Western media regarding the politics of Uganda and the long dictatorship of Yoweri Museveni. Finally, and equally if not more significant is the book’s entry into a growing market of nonfiction releases dealing with Dubai, especially those manuscripts which challenge the widely popularized perceptions of the cosmopolitan utopia in Dubai and its neighboring emirates.

ABOUT YASIN KAKANDE

A native of Uganda, Yasin Kakande has been a Middle East journalist for nearly a decade. He currently works for the Abu Dhabi-based The National newspaper as the correspondent for the northern Emirates. He also has worked as a news producer for City 7 TV in Dubai, a features writer for the Khaleej Times, and as a reporter and assistant editor for the Bahrain Tribune.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and a master of business administration degree in marketing from the United Arab Emirates branch of the U.S.-based Preston University. He is fluent in English, Arabic, Swahili, and French.

 FACEBOOK

Filed Under: Book Spotlight, Book Tours, Pump Up Your Book Tours Tagged With: , , ,

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