WDS Book Club - Read and Recommend

WDS Book Club - Summer Reads
By the News You Can Use Committee

Summer is heating up! Ready to cool off with a summer escape? Whether you’re craving a relaxing beachside book or a fun staycation read, dive into this selection of titles curated by your WDS Members

 
Molly Stout, MD recommends the following books:

1) The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hildebrand – An iconic summer destination in need of a fearless leader, plus a little ghostly mystery.

2) The Covenant of Water by Abraham Vergase – A multigenerational family saga with lots of nods of medicine. Don’t be afraid of the page count, this tome is hard to put down.

3) The Burnout by Sophie Kinsella – A young woman finds herself at a career meltdown and retreats to her childhood vacation town. For anyone feeling burnt out, this will reignite a little heat!

4) The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post by Allison Pataki – Consider your historical fiction itch scratched with this real-life cereal heiress. The plot thickens with every husband! 

 

 Morayo Adisa, MD recommends the following book:

 

1) The Fear-Fighter Manual: Lessons from a Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Ajayi Jones – An empowering fresh read to help/encourage transformation of fear into boldness in all aspects of life. 

 Shawna Flanagan, MD recommends the following books:

 

NON-FICTION

1) Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor – What an interesting and thoroughly researched overview of how important breathing techniques are to our overall health. I won’t give away the take home messages as I think you will enjoy reading this or listening to James Nestor orate his own book on audible. His voice is pleasant - I always like to listen to a free sample on audible as I know from the sample whether the voice is worthy of listening to for many hours duration!

 

FICTION

2) The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl – For someone who loves to eat and loves France this book is such a treat. I can’t wait to try some of the places that were mentioned in the book when I head to Paris this summer. This book is full of historical fiction blended with the 1980s (which at this point is historical fiction as well!). 

 

3) Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See – A fascinating account of 15^th -century China and ancient Chinese medicine and the women who secretly practiced it to help other women.   

 

Randie Kim, MD PhD recommends the following book:

 

1) Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant – For anyone who has felt stuck, this book will show you that your potential is not about where you started, but how far you go, and that unlocking one’s potential sometimes means stepping out of your comfort zone, even when you don’t feel prepared or ready. 

 

Susan Massick, MD FAAD recommends the following book:

 

 

1) Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad – Writer Suleika Jaouad had just graduated from college and was living in Paris when she was diagnosed with AML at age 22. She chronicled her experience in a personal blog that became a NY Times column entitled "Life, Interrupted." This memoir covers her health journey from cancer patient to bone marrow transplant recipient and cancer survivor and her spiritual journey toward healing. She embarks on a cross-country road trip to meet some of the people who had contacted her during her cancer treatment and to learn how to live again. The read is all the more poignant knowing now that ten years after her "cure," she suffered a relapse requiring a second bone marrow transplant in 2023, that became the backdrop of the Netflix documentary American Symphony featuring the writer and her husband, musician Jon Batiste.

 

 Catherine Tchanque-Fossuo, MD MS FAAD recommends the following book:

1) Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Donald Kladstrup – Authors Don and Petie Kladstrup talked to survivors of the World War II Nazi occupation of France and put their stories together in this book. They all went through different experiences and hardships, but the one thing they all had in common was wine.  

Despite the Germans believing that the French had the strongest army in the world, the leaders of France and its military were so scarred from the loss of young men from their experience in the First World War that they decided on a deal to be occupied rather than go through that horror again. When the Germans rolled in, however, the wine people went to work.  

They hid their most prized wines immediately, knowing that the Germans would take them and, more importantly, not appreciate them. They built walls in their cellars, closing in the wines behind them, and had their children collect spiders so they'd spin webs to make the wall look older. Dust from old carpets were collected to put on cheap bottles to make them appear rare.

 

Cather McKay, MD FAAD recommends the following book:

Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy C. Edmondson - As humans, failure is inevitable. As physicians and team leaders or business owners, this fact can be hard to entertain. In Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, Edmondson reviews three types of failure—basic, complex, and intelligent— with many examples from business, engineering, and medicine. She highlights the importance of creating a culture of psychological safety in the workplace so errors can be addressed. She outlines preventing avoidable failures and encourages smart risks even when they result in failure. While failure is never easy, it is a part of life and can be embraced when it allows us to grow on personal and professional levels.