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jburkespraker's reviews
185 reviews
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
informative
medium-paced
5.0
As an editor, I know checklists are essential to reducing errors. It’s interesting hearing a doctor talk about them like a revolutionary act. Like what do you mean they weren’t common in ERs before the WHO test project?
Really amazing and miraculous. The simple checklist can humble the surgeon.
I like that the last story is about a personal failure and a checklist win.
I feel like I don’t do checklists like I used to. Maybe it’s time to take another look.
Really amazing and miraculous. The simple checklist can humble the surgeon.
I like that the last story is about a personal failure and a checklist win.
I feel like I don’t do checklists like I used to. Maybe it’s time to take another look.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content and Medical trauma
The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are by Tariq Trotter
4.5
I really enjoyed this love letter to Philly, its music, and our people. I liked that he narrates himself with a couple assists. It was great to learn about his path to Mural Arts.
The tone is reflective without being overwrought. I wish we had gotten more insight into his creative imagination. This is his life story, not a creative manifesto. But maybe that’s another book.
The tone is reflective without being overwrought. I wish we had gotten more insight into his creative imagination. This is his life story, not a creative manifesto. But maybe that’s another book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent
Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century by Lorene Cary
5.0
Such a beautiful and moving meditation on death and dying, the complicated relationships of family, and even Philly itself.
A Quantum Love Story by Mike Chen
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
I know how it feels to be stuck in a loop, where you just can’t move forward.
Mike Chen gets it. His time-traveling love story shows us what happens when that loop is real—and catastrophe feels like the only outcome.
But what if it’s not? What if there’s a way through? And what does any of this have to do with quantum physics?
Everything.
Great cozy vibes with a love story that transcends time.
Mike Chen gets it. His time-traveling love story shows us what happens when that loop is real—and catastrophe feels like the only outcome.
But what if it’s not? What if there’s a way through? And what does any of this have to do with quantum physics?
Everything.
Great cozy vibes with a love story that transcends time.
Rosarita by Anita Desai
4.5
A brief taste of the talents of Anita Desai. I enjoyed the relationship between the narrator Bonita and the Trickster. I found the use of second person refreshing. I will reread it again to absorb its subtleties.
This Beautiful, Ridiculous City by Kay Sohini
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Graphic memoir presents such a fascinating opportunity to blend text and images. Kay Sohini’s debut is everything you want in a graphic memoir: vivid, captivating, bittersweet, reflective.
She left Calcutta to escape an abusive relationship, and we should be honored that she shared her journey with us.
As someone who moved across the world to divorce, I understood all those feelings when she landed at JFK.
Her love for the food of NYC is so profound. Such a necessary joy in a story of complex emotions.
She left Calcutta to escape an abusive relationship, and we should be honored that she shared her journey with us.
As someone who moved across the world to divorce, I understood all those feelings when she landed at JFK.
Her love for the food of NYC is so profound. Such a necessary joy in a story of complex emotions.
The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai
5.0
Loved it! Better than the first book. I can’t wait for the third installment!
All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography by Ida M. Tarbell
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Ida Tarbell is the muckraking journalist who took down Standard Oil, and that is the least interesting thing about her.
She is the Progressive Era’s Kara Swisher.
Born in 1857—the same year that oil is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania and the US has one of its many bank panics—Ida Tarbell lives through the Civil War, the Gilded Age, World War I, the roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and publishes her autobiography the year that World War II breaks out. He dies in 1944.
Although she’s seen as a critic of Standard Oil, her work is only possible through access journalism. For two years, she conducts interviews with members of the its executive team. These interviews form the basis of the 19 articles that she publishes in McClure‘s Magazine.
Eventually, she writes a 1000-page history of Standard Oil. In the later part of her book, she mentions that she considered adding a third volume that reflects the breakup of the company, but it was never completed.
She later profiles Henry Ford, who invites her on the peace boat, his attempt to intervene in World War I. She also profiles Judge Gary, the second president of US steel right as US steel is being sued by the US government for violating the Sherman Act.
In the book, she makes it clear that she doesn’t have a problem with American industrialists accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth as long as the business and labor practices are fair.
She also serves on the women’s committee in Woodrow Wilson’s administration. If you think that would qualify her as a feminist, you would be wrong. She is deeply against suffrage for women and makes that clear throughout the book.
In what might be called the most bizarre anecdote in her book, she interviews Mussolini and describes him as and I quote:
“He might be—was, I believed—a fearful despot, but he had a dimple.”
She thinks Napoleon is great, writes extensively on Lincoln, and publishes a book on tariffs to explain how they work to the public at a time when—much like now—they are having a negative impact on the US economy.
As a genre, memoir is the least trustworthy historical source. Looking back on your own life means you are neither objective nor accurate in your portrayal. So we must take Ida’s reflections with a heaping tablespoon of salt, but her account gives us tremendous insight into the experience of working women in the late 19th and early 20th century.
In short, Ida Tarbell is an incredible writer, lived a fabulous life, and wrote some of the most important journalism of the Progressive Era
She would make a fun project to study. I am thinking of looking for her McClure’s essays.
She is the Progressive Era’s Kara Swisher.
Born in 1857—the same year that oil is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania and the US has one of its many bank panics—Ida Tarbell lives through the Civil War, the Gilded Age, World War I, the roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and publishes her autobiography the year that World War II breaks out. He dies in 1944.
Although she’s seen as a critic of Standard Oil, her work is only possible through access journalism. For two years, she conducts interviews with members of the its executive team. These interviews form the basis of the 19 articles that she publishes in McClure‘s Magazine.
Eventually, she writes a 1000-page history of Standard Oil. In the later part of her book, she mentions that she considered adding a third volume that reflects the breakup of the company, but it was never completed.
She later profiles Henry Ford, who invites her on the peace boat, his attempt to intervene in World War I. She also profiles Judge Gary, the second president of US steel right as US steel is being sued by the US government for violating the Sherman Act.
In the book, she makes it clear that she doesn’t have a problem with American industrialists accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth as long as the business and labor practices are fair.
She also serves on the women’s committee in Woodrow Wilson’s administration. If you think that would qualify her as a feminist, you would be wrong. She is deeply against suffrage for women and makes that clear throughout the book.
In what might be called the most bizarre anecdote in her book, she interviews Mussolini and describes him as and I quote:
“He might be—was, I believed—a fearful despot, but he had a dimple.”
She thinks Napoleon is great, writes extensively on Lincoln, and publishes a book on tariffs to explain how they work to the public at a time when—much like now—they are having a negative impact on the US economy.
As a genre, memoir is the least trustworthy historical source. Looking back on your own life means you are neither objective nor accurate in your portrayal. So we must take Ida’s reflections with a heaping tablespoon of salt, but her account gives us tremendous insight into the experience of working women in the late 19th and early 20th century.
In short, Ida Tarbell is an incredible writer, lived a fabulous life, and wrote some of the most important journalism of the Progressive Era
She would make a fun project to study. I am thinking of looking for her McClure’s essays.
Take Care of Them Like My Own: Faith, Fortitude, and a Surgeon's Fight for Health Justice by Ala Stanford
Did not finish book. Stopped at 4%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 4%.
Descriptions of medical procedure was too graphic