February 13, Saturday night -- Reading Chris Cleave

During intermission at a literary event hosted by Charlie Anders -- Writers with Drinks
Reading Little Bee, by Chris Cleave -- so gripping you can't even put it down during a night out. It's about a Nigerian teenage refugee named Little Bee and a British suburban woman who runs a women's magazine. The story is really good.

She reads about 5 books a month, or about 200 pages a night. She has no television and is a family physician. Books help her unwind in the evenings. She just read Dubliners for her Classics book club and also Away, by Amy Bloom, about a Jewish woman, who, in the 1920s, fled Russia during a pogrom, and later returns to Siberia to find her daughter.

I showed her the book in my bag -- Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks and she remarked that Oliver Sacks was the first person to write medical narrative. I asked her if she'd read Atul Gawande's book, Complications, which is also medical narrative, and not only had she read it, and also read his other book, Better, she has met the author. Medicine is a small world.

Books that were a turning point for her -- in high school she began reading Russian novels, and loved them for their sense of humanity and their emotional depth.
Sorry (to everyone who I blinded) for the bright flash! The room is actually dark -- picture disco ball spinning flecks of light against a ceiling of ribbon-like tinsel....and bear skin rug.