Code Gray: Death, Life, and Uncertainty in the ER by Farzon A. Nahvi
As an emergency room physician in a New York City hospital, Dr. Farzon Nahvi is inherently qualified to describe the trial and tribulations of working in an ER.
Code Gray describes a single pre-pandemic night shift in a New York City hospital. Dr. Nahvi's first patient arrives in the ER with paramedics giving her CPR. Thus begins the overarching story of Lola and her husband Anthony. Their story is interwoven throughout the book with the likely culprit of her death being revealed at the end.
In the meantime, Lola and Anthony’s story is interspersed with some of Dr. Nahvi’s previous medical cases. Instead of gunshots and “crazy ER stories”, he shares memorable cases that provoked thoughtful contemplation. Medical staff confront constant uncertainty and unresolved emotional trauma and grapple with it throughout their careers. Dr. Nahvi’s stories challenge us to confront life's core questions and to truly contemplate them. He also shares his own unanswered questions and second guessing that have been a part of his growth as a physician. Dr. Nahvi’s uncertainty is a sign of wisdom and compassion.
There is death and pain throughout the book, but ultimately, I was left with the comfort of knowing that compassionate doctors exist in our world.
The High House by Jessie Greengrass
This is a climate change-disaster story of four people living in a home called High House along the Suffolk coast of England. Planned and provisioned as a refuge over the years by Francesca, a climate scientist and activist, for her stepdaughter Caro; son Pauly; a caretaker, Grandy; and his granddaughter, Sally. The four spend years together, while the seas flood much of the world, leaving them on an island and growing ever more isolated.
The story begins when Caro, Pauly and Sally are much older, looking back over their childhoods, and then their many years at High House. We see how careful and farsighted Francesca was, but even with all her planning, the High House survivors understand that eventually they will run out of supplies through use, spoilage, and age. Then what will differentiate them from all the others who died earlier, is that theirs will be a long, slow death.
The High House is a melancholy novel but a beautiful one as well, as it showcases a mother's absolute love for her child. It also shows how four disparate characters learn to live with each other as things change quickly around them. The story is quiet, matching the lives of those in High House, which makes the devastation and losses outside this tiny place of safety even more horrifying.
Fiction: Science Fiction, Apocalyptic
Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald
NOTE: This book was published in 1959.
Level 7 is the tale of a military man who lives in a bunker 4,400 feet below the surface of the earth. He is not told why he is to go into the bunker beforehand, and when he gets there, he finds out that he must spend the rest of his life there. He's not the only one down there. There are more men like him who wait in shifts for “the command” to come. Plus, there is an army of nurses to care for their physical needs, scientists who keep the air flowing, and psychologists to pooh-pooh the worries of those who miss fresh air and sunshine.
The story is told through his diary in which he records events as well as his thoughts and feelings. The diary is the only thing that keeps him sane. He has no name, only a number and his job is to sit in a room and wait for the command to push a series of buttons which will unleash complete nuclear destruction on the earth.
Fiction: Mystery, Psychological Thriller
Love You Gone by Rona Halsall
Luke is a widower with two kids and is struggling after the death of his wife. He is estranged from his parents and needs help raising his children. Mel is in her late thirties and a successful businesswoman. She desperately wants a child. So, when she meets Luke, Mel sees the perfect opportunity to step into the role of a mother as well as try to have a child of her own. After a series of problems, Luke and Mel decide to go on a holiday to the Lake Country to sort things out. Luke arrives first with the children, with Mel arriving later after a business meeting.
When Mel arrives at a holiday cabin, she expects to find her husband and two children but instead finds a note saying they went for a hike and will be right back. Hours later they still hadn’t shown up, so Mel decides to call the police…
We have all heard, “you never know what goes on behind closed doors.” This is the idea that people behave differently at home than in public. Well, Love You Gone opens the “closed doors” to reveal a disturbing truth about Mel and Luke.
Nonfiction: History, Politics, China
Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan
"Up to two million people died during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, in which Mao Zedong sought to bolster communism. Among them were many teachers killed by students as part of an anti-intellectual movement.”
Tania Branigan, a former Beijing correspondent for the Guardian, arrived in China in 2008 at a time when people were willing to speak to her and discuss the past. She spent hundreds of hours interviewing perpetrators and victims, distilling their testimony into this book, and interspersing it with her own astute observations on Chinese history, the Chinese psyche, the concept of memory itself and its abuses and distortions by the Chinese government.
I knew very little about China's Cultural Revolution, which
took place from 1966-1976. I learned it is a period of Chinese history that has
been all but erased for Chinese people themselves.
During this ten-year period, China was riven with violence and suspicion.
Chairman Mao unleashed a mob of teenage Red Guards to attack those who he
perceived as his enemies. It resulted in the murder of at least a million
scholars, entertainers, academics, and "elites", many of whom were brutalized
and tortured.
Spouses reported on each other, and children reported their parents for “wrong thinking” which ensured the torture and execution of millions of husbands, fathers, wives, and mothers. While some of the now-grown children have acknowledged the cruelty of their accusations and can recount a specific timeline of events, they are unable to answer the essential question – “Why did you do that?”
Red Memory is a fascinating insight into a hidden period of history. There are parallels that can be drawn with abuses in other parts of the world and Branigan draws these - though such abuses are seen through a very different prism when you consider the privilege it is to know and understand history, and the importance of ensuring future generations understand it, not something that can be assured for Chinese people – or even Americans - unfortunately.
Red Memory is detailed, complex, traumatic, and disturbing. Yet we must understand such horrors, lest they happen again.
Nonfiction: Psychology, Business, Management
Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy C. Edmondson
The author, Amy C. Edmondson, is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, where she teaches courses in leadership, organizational learning, and operations management in the MBA and Executive Education programs.
We all screw up, make mistakes, and fail. Fortunately, Edmondson has been studying failure for years. Right Kind of Wrong explains how to prevent basic failures, how to create a space for intelligent failures and how to accept the inevitability of mistakes and failures of all kinds in the contexts of business, science, and -- unexpectedly -- family life. Each concept is illustrated by alternating examples from each of four different contexts: manufacturing, scientific innovation, medicine, and family. Also, Right Kind of Wrong effectively uses a combination of research as well as anecdotes to demonstrate how the concept works in real life. Finally, this book discusses techniques to avoid/cope/mitigate failure using behavioral science, psychology, and system design. This was a fascinating book.
Books by the Beach Book Club: Magical Realism, International Fiction (Sri Lanka)
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, winner of the 2022 Booker Prize
Publisher’s Description: “Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka.”
The ghost of Maali Almeida finds himself in a limbo place called the In Between. He has seven moons to figure out who killed him and why. Then he must also decide whether to proceed into The Light or remain forever in the In Between. A ghost called Sena is trying to influence him to join his group in the In Between so they can take revenge on their killers. A demon called the Mahakali is out to devour as many souls as possible.
Nonfiction: Science, Food, Politics
We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foe
"According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, if cows were a country, they would rank third in greenhouse gas emissions, after China and the United States."
And that's ONLY COWS. It does not include chickens, pigs, turkeys and all the factory farmed animals. Here are a couple factoids Mr. Foer also points out:
- "Livestock are the leading source of methane emissions."
- "Methane has 34 times the global warming potential (GWP)—the ability to trap heat—as CO2."
The book's general idea is that we can make personal changes to positively impact climate change such as eating less, or no factory farmed animals.
If people ate less animal products collectively, we would have a better chance of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. We are aware of the greenhouse gas emissions from cars and fossil-fuel industry, but our politicians refuse to act on reducing these emissions. However, each of us individually can help the environment, right now, today, by eating less factory farmed animal products.
We have heard reasoned arguments and warnings. Most people accept climate change as a scientific fact. In the popular film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warned, "We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but political will. But in America, the will to act is a renewable resource." The political will has not been there and many deny the scientific studies as fable. We Are the Weather is, in essence, a long discussion with us, and the author with himself, on how difficult it is to get to a deep commitment based on a sense of personal and existential threat of death.
We Are the Weather's message is important. Despite measuring in at just over 200 pages, the first 70 were spent on seemingly disparate topics almost exclusively unrelated to climate change. I was, at first, baffled, but soon found this to be a very clever device to ensure the reader began to associate the seemingly distant fears of the irrevocable destruction of our planet to more immediate threats, such as those of war. I found the strongest argument he makes is that if something doesn't directly impact someone personally, they are unwilling to act. AMEN!
Nonfiction: Judaism, History, Social Justice
We Need to Talk About Antisemitism by Rabbi Diana Fersko
The author, Rabbi Fersko, defines antisemitism as "a conspiracy theory that thrives on the idea that human existence is too complicated for people to really understand, so instead it supplies a simple story with a coherent narrative, a clear villain (the Jews), and a clear victim (everyone else)...People hate the Jews because we are Jewish. That's the definition of antisemitism."
We Need to Talk About Antisemitism has eight chapters that help define antisemitism and explore themes – “We Need to Talk About …”
- Antisemitism
- Microaggressions
- Christianity
- The Holocaust
- Race
- Israel
- Accountability
- The Future
👉Jews make up around 2 percent of the U.S. population. Yet, in 2022, according to the FBI data, reported antisemitic hate crime incidents accounted for 9.6 percent of all hate crimes.
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