Sleeping Giants

 Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel, 320 pages.

When Rose Franklin was a little girl she fell down a hole and into a giant metal hand. Nearly two decades later she is a physicist leading the team studying that same hand. It quickly becomes clear that Earth is not capable of making something like this, and also that there are more pieces of one very large body scattered across the globe. Dr. Franklin's secretive team, brought together by a man so mysterious they don't know his name or affiliation, bear the responsibility of decoding technology that has the potential of shaking the nature of the world.

I listened to the audiobook of this novel and was immediately entirely engrossed. The story is told entirely through primary source documents of the events (interviews, diary entries, mission briefings, new reports, etc), which is a format that really works for me. I loved seeing the story gradually get pieced together from every angle. I also really enjoyed all of the characters, who were a good throughline for the many perspectives. The audiobook in particular was fully cast, and I thought every narrator did a great job, which may have also influenced how much I liked the characters. Perhaps in the highest mark of praise, a review for the second book will be coming soon, because I started listening to it immediately after finishing this one. 

Every Patient Tells a Story

Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis by Lisa Sanders, MD (2009) 276 pages

Lisa Sanders, MD is a Yale-educated doctor who came to her profession after having first been a journalist. She has been a medical columnist for the New York Times Magazine and also was an advisor to the TV doctors series House. 

She sees a need for doctors and medical students to be better trained in listening to patients and in performing exams, as well as in working to get diagnoses right. She gives readers an inside look into medical school and in the doctor's exam room. Sanders is not afraid to share her own experiences in medical school and beyond, including some misdiagnoses. Being privy to the backgrounds of several patients whose health issues were slow to be addressed correctly is eye-opening.