Some books

I read with curiosity the personal diary of Dr. Michihiko Hachiya, who ran a hospital in Hiroshima, when the atomic bomb exploded. The incident would usher the end of World War Two. He did not intend for his personal diary to be published, but he wrote with vivid description and clinical accuracy. So much pain and compassion could be gleaned from his daily account. I loved that most of his entries started with descriptions of the weather. Despite his personal injuries, he kept working, ignoring otherwise sound advice to recuperate. What struck me was how much Dr. Hachiya loved his country and his people. He also loved science. In the midst of so much work of caring for the ill and dying, he continued to pursue clinical questions, particularly on why patients who did not suffer obvious physical injuries deteriorated after a few days or weeks, often of internal hemorrhage.

 

I'm preparing my creative non-fiction piece for an anthology I'm also co-editing. To get my brain pumped up, I'm turning to John Jeremiah Sullivan's Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son. I thoroughly enjoyed Pulphead, Sullivan's collection of essays. I'm also revisiting the Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror, which the wonderful doctor-writer Dr. China Castillo gave me last year. So, so good. 

I'm writing all about these to remember and to inspire you, dear reader, to get away from your smartphones and read a proper book.