What I've been reading

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
by Henry Marsh

"With compassion and candour, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humour that characterise a brain surgeon's life."

This is an account of various neurosurgical operations, but much more than that. It builds a picture around the surgery of the people who have the ultimate responsibility for cutting into - damaging - a person's body in order to repair it, and the risks and pressure of that responsibility. While an operation on paper might have a 5% risk of a negative outcome, that 5% is the doctor's risk - for the patient it's a 100% disaster if they happen to be the one in 20 that it happens to, or 100% success if it works. And, he certainly highlighted some of the frustration of NHS bureaucracy that I experience, as well as the thankless task of the medicine regulatory and advisory bodies, weighing hope against cost and percentages. A beautiful, savage, frustrating, uplifting, truthful book.

Spies
by Michael Frayn

narrated by Martin Jarvis

"It is wartime and Stephen's friend Keith makes the momentous announcement that his mother is a German spy. The two boys begin to spy on the supposed spy, following her on her trips to the shops and to the post, and reading her diary."

I suppose it was OK. Because it is read by Martin Jarvis the main protagonist (Stephen) sounded much like a more serious wartime version of Just William or Jennings and Derbyshire (especially as there was also an Elizabeth Bott character), but aside from that it wasn't bad. Slow going, though, when read out loud. If I'd had a print copy I'd have skimmed a lot of it.

Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving
by Julia Samuel

"This is a compassionate guide that will inform and engage anyone who is grieving, from the 'expected' death of a parent to the sudden unexpected death of a small child, and provide clear advice for those seeking to comfort the bereaved."

Lola II lent me this book, and it's pretty good - obviously true to life, so there are no stories neatly tied with a clear message, just the messy episodes that life (and death) brings. She ends with a couple of chapters of suggestions for dealing with both your own troubles and those of others. We don't have much difficulty talking about death in our family, what with dad's preoccupation with the subject, but I imagine it will be a different story when it actually comes a bit closer to me.

Breaking Free: Glimpses of a Buddhist Life
by Srimala

"In 1975 Srimala (formerly Jane Goody) was ordained into the Western Buddhist Order by Sangharakshita whilst pregnant with her second child, and in this book she recounts the challenges of combining motherhood with the spiritual path."

I picked this up while I was at the Buddhist retreat and read it in a day. Just because everyone has a story in them doesn't mean they should publish it. Write it down for yourself if you want to, yes, of course, but a bad book about an interesting story is disappointing. Hard to pin down what was wrong, but I never really understood what she was up to at any point, and it skipped from here to there all over the place. I suppose that's what is meant by the 'Glimpses' in the title.

The Science of Meditation: How to Change Your Brain, Mind and Body
by Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson

"Remarkable findings that show how meditation - without drugs or high expense - can cultivate qualities such as selflessness, equanimity, love and compassion, and redesign our neural circuitry."

Another book that I read while on the Buddhist retreat, but this time it's my own book that I took with me. It describes the research carried out by the authors and others looking at the positive health benefits of meditation, trying to separate the evidence from the myth and conjecture. They discuss the dose-response effect - more hours of meditation bring more benefit, by way of slower ageing and reduced levels of inflammation. The 'Olympic' meditators they studied (yogis from Tibet) even demonstrated a totally new brainwave pattern.

The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner

narrated by Grover Gardner

"This book relates the tragedy of the Compson family, set in the US South at the start of the 20th century - the days of segregation and prejudice."

If you have read this book you will understand the situation when I say I had no idea whatsoever what I was getting myself into. I thought this was just another of the classic books from my list, but how wrong I was. It relates some of the events within a family with four children whom we follow from childhood to adulthood. The first part is narrated from the point of view of one of the children who is 'deaf and dumb' - has a learning disability in today's parlance. The narrative in that section jumps between several points in time without warning; apparently in the print book there is some indication, but not in the audio version.

This ought to be baffling and annoying, and by rights I should have been unable to get through the book, but somehow it completely won me over. Full disclosure - I had to look on the interwebs to find out what on earth was going on, and I doubt that I would have understood several parts without the help of that research. To be fair, the author makes it all the more confusing by having two characters named Jason, two named Maury - one of whom is also called Benjy - and two characters named Quentin, one of whom is a girl. It's as if he isn't even giving the reader a chance to work things out the first time round, which is why I started reading from the beginning again as soon as I reached the end. Totally worth it.