Brain surgery

There's a subject line you don't write very often.

I'm trying to get back into reading for pleasure. Reading almost exclusively for work over the years, and reading newspaper columns (even well written ones) has taken so much time… now I need to relearn the pleasure of just getting lost in a book.

I've just finished Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh. Here's what I thought about it:

A haunting and powerful read that eloquently relays, contextualises and describes the human side of being a brain surgeon. You need particular character traits to stick with that job and Henry's narrative is both gripping and profound yet rarely over-emotional. How else could you cope with the kinds of discussions you need to have day in and day out in that line of work? Yet the book is uplifting in so many ways, and the author's stories and self-descriptions in harrowing situations, both personal and professional, will stay with me for a long time. It's a very good book.