What would you send with a friend to read in the doctor's office?*
06 May 2015
So yesterday in the comments someone said that she gave some Jen Lancaster memoirs to someone going through chemotherapy, and that person really enjoyed them. Which is an excellent thing.
But it got me thinking. Rather than thinking of a list of books you would take with you to a desert island, here's the challenge for today: What book/s would you send with someone going in for some worrying health procedures? Here's the best I can do, on short notice**:
1. (If they are a real reader) 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff. Of course.
2. Drew Magary's futuristic novel The Postmortal. Really. The story moved along tickety-boo and it gave you some bigger issues to think about.
3. Jim Gaffigan's Food: A Love Affair. Really, super funny. Also very low on bad language if you're concerned about that sort of thing.
4. Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Very transporting, and really quite funny, if I remember correctly.
5. Oh my God, the entire Poldark saga, if the person had any tolerance for historical fiction.
6. Michael Lewis's The Blind Side, for sports readers.
7. CalvinTrillin's novel Tepper Isn't Going Out, which I re-read regularly because I just find it so sweet.
I know I'm missing a ton. So what would you send along with a friend to the hospital?
*I almost titled this "with a friend to read, when they're not wearing underwear." Because doctors always seem to be telling me worrisome things when I'm not wearing underwear, and it makes me nuts. But I didn't want to get all sorts of weird search hits from a headline like that.
**And from experience. I cannot go to the doctor without taking along engrossing reading material. The last time I went my pulse rate was so high (from nerves) that they thought I was going to have a heart attack. They actually had to check my record, where another doctor had noted that my pulse rate at appointments is always ridiculous, so no worries.