Coffeespoons

I've been pimping Surgeons Do Not Cry by Ting Tiongco for a while now for two reasons. The lesser of these reasons is that our company co-published the ebook edition . So that's my "full disclosure" statement. But the bigger reason is that I read the book and was utterly both charmed and blown away by it. Ting Tiongco was a med student at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Medicine, the country's premiere med school, in the early 1970s. He interned at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), a government hospital and the lab hospital of UP. PGH caters to the poorest of the poor, which is saying a lot in a third-world country. Moreover, the 1970s was a historic time in Metro Manila--the era of the declaration of martial law and student demonstrations against a dictatorial regime. So, Tiongco's book is a memoir of his experiences pre- and during med school during those tumultuous times.  But it is absolutely not a political book. I say ...

This was my Mother's Day read (yes, that long ago). I didn't want to read one of those Oprah books (not that I have anything against them, but I don't like being pigeon-holed.) and I think I made the right choice.I thought Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle was a beautiful book. There are probably many other reasons why I chose it--issues with mothers, wanting to read about the Walls family, getting another book off my TBR...but mainly, I guess, the book called out to me. Regardless of reason, I was enthralled by the book from the beginning. Jeannette Walls' first memory was of being on fire. She was three and her mother let her cook hotdogs by herself. She got into an accident, caught fire, and was brought by her mom to the hospital. She loved being in the hospital because it was totally different from the trailer park in which they lived. Her brother and sister came to visit, as well as her dad, who didn't approve of hospitals or anything to do with The ...