Sample Saturday – doctors, rivals, and comfort food

Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all three books were spotted on my Goodreads feed –

This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay

Summary: First-hand account of life as a junior doctor in all its joy, pain, sacrifice and maddening bureaucracy.

I’m thinking: Yes.

“The decision to work in medicine is basically a version of the email you get in early October asking you to choose your menu options for the work Christmas party. No doubt you’ll choose the chicken, to be on the safe side, and it’s more than likely everything will be all right. But what if someone shares a ghastly factory farming video on Facebook the day before and you inadvertently witness a mass debeaking?”

The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art by Sebastian Smee

Summary: Smee examines the story of four pairs of artists – Matisse and Picasso; Manet and Degas; Bacon and Freud; De Kooning and Pollock – whose intense relationships shaped their art.

I’m thinking: Yes.

The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish to Mend a Broken Heart by Emily Nunn

Summary: Searching for a way forward after the tragic death of her brother, Emily Nunn seeks solace and healing in food. This book details her Comfort Food Tour of America.

I’m thinking: Yes. Hard to resist a book with chapter titles such as ‘Cherries Jubilee and Other Dangerous Dishes’

11 responses

    • Probably not (although I’m always curious about medical stuff and must admit I’m the sort of person who loves watching surgery on tv, whereas my family screech in horror!).

    • It’s my way of managing impulse-buying too many books! The most revealing part is when I get to the end of the year and work out how many books I did/will buy and how many I ditched, by reading the samples first.

  1. I really want to read This is Going to Hurt. Yes, medical memoirs have been done already, but they haven’t been done from the perspective of a junior doctor working in the NHS in its current state of siege. It’s had good reviews over here.

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