New COTT Battle Posted!!

It's a bit morbid to start the new year this way, but I encourage you to hop on over to the COTT website and vote for one of two death scenes! I had a hard time choosing a winner on this one! :) Each vote enters you in a drawing for a copy of one of the books being "clashed" for the month! :)

New Review Coming Soon!!

I just wanted to pop in really quick to let you know that I have a review coming up later this week. For those of you who love suspense, this is a book you'll want to read. The good news is, you can read it this week for a very reasonable price! Check it out...Darby Rae's debut book, Merciful Law, is available for $0.99 for a limited time at her website,  www.darbyrae.com

I'm having a hard time putting this one down!

A-Z Wednesday Featuring the Fantastic Letter "F"

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link(amazon, barnes and noble etc.)
4~ Come back here and leave your link in the comments
If you've already reviewed this book you can add it also.
Be sure to visit other participants to see what book they have posted and leave them a comment.
(We all love comments, don't we?)
Who knows? You may find your next "favorite" book.
THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: F

Final Exam by Pauline W. Chen

The following is posted from RandomHouse

ABOUT THIS BOOK

A brilliant young transplant surgeon brings moral intensity and narrative drama to the most powerful and vexing questions of medicine and the human condition.

When Pauline Chen began medical school twenty years ago, she dreamed of saving lives. What she did not count on was how much death would be a part of her work. Almost immediately, Chen found herself wrestling with medicine’s most profound paradox, that a profession premised on caring for the ill also systematically depersonalizes dying. Final Exam follows Chen over the course of her education, training, and practice as she grapples at strikingly close range with the problem of mortality, and struggles to reconcile the lessons of her training with her innate knowledge of shared humanity, and to separate her ideas about healing from her fierce desire to cure.

From her first dissection of a cadaver in gross anatomy to the moment she first puts a scalpel to a living person; from the first time she witnesses someone flatlining in the emergency room to the first time she pronounces a patient dead, Chen is struck by her own mortal fears: there was a dying friend she could not call; a young patient’s tortured death she could not forget; even the sense of shared kinship with a corpse she could not cast aside when asked to saw its pelvis in two. Gradually, as she confronts the ways in which her fears have incapacitated her, she begins to reject what she has been taught about suppressing her feelings for her patients, and she begins to carve out a new role for herself as a physician and as human being. Chen’s transfixing and beautiful rumination on how doctors negotiate the ineluctable fact of death becomes, in the end, a brilliant questioning of how we should live.

Moving and provocative, motored equally by clinical expertise and extraordinary personal grace, this is a piercing and compassionate journey into the heart of a world that is hidden and yet touches all of our lives. A superb addition to the best medical literature of our time.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030727537X
• ISBN-13: 978-0307275370
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces

This one is on my TBR list, as well as a required reading for HOSA (Healthcare Occupations Students of America) competition which will be held in March, 2010.

Nothing But Ghosts

Nothing but Ghosts by Beth Kephart

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
What do a dig site, a painting, 7 boxes of "local lore", and the 'disappearance' of a mother all have in common? This story of course!!



Nothing But Ghosts is the story of Katie who is a tender-hearted 16 year old suffering from the loss of her mom to cancer. It hurts her so to say that she has died so, like many teenagers do, she finds a way of coping and begins to talk of her mom 'disappearing'. Katie is a great kid and she and her dad have some issues to work out in dealing with the loss of Katie's mom. Katie decides to work at the manor of the mysterious Socialite Ms. Martine while her dad wraps himself in restoring an old painting. Little do they know the clues and stories that will intertwine life together in peculiar, yet mysterious, ways.



Throughout this book, different stages of grief are represented in a tender and caring way. There is also a little romance, a huge mystery, and a lot of reflection. I love how Katie spends time talking to her mom still and sharing those 'mother-daughter' moments with her in her absence.



This book is so beautifully written and I highly recommend it. It will put a smile on your face, might bring a tear to your eye, and it will warm your heart when you reflect on lost loves in your life. I thought often of my grandmother as I read this book and even though she's been gone many, many years, I found some healing in this book. I only hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.



But, don't just take my word for it!! Go visit http://www.myfriendamysblog.com/2009/06/... for another great perspective on the book. Also, remember that Amy is hosting a book party and we are trying to get as many copies of this book out as possible. I hope you'll consider joining us in the promotion of this wonderful book.



Be sure to also check out Beth Kephart's other books for young adult readers!!






View all my reviews.