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I've got a collaborative Twixtmas special coming up today. I've asked a number of friends of the podcast to tell us about their top read of 2024 and what they're most looking forward to reading in 2025. Thanks for joining me in 2024, and I'm looking forward to sharing plenty more books with you in 2025.
Featured today are the voices and choices of:
Sabina Dosani https://sabinadosani.com/
Leah Hazard https://www.leahhazard.co.uk/
Derek Ochiai https://twitter.com/DrDerekOchiai
Helen Blomfield https://www.helenblomfield.co.uk/
Pim Dhahan https://www.linkedin.com/in/pim-dhahan-1a21a5b9/
Nicola Ennis https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicola-ennis-3b5ab1215/
Claire McKie https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-mckie-a54a52234/
Nicola Davis https://bsky.app/profile/drnicoladavis.bsky.social and https://bsky.app/profile/crxeate.bsky.social
Anna Baverstock https://bsky.app/profile/annabav.bsky.social
David Hindmarsh https://www.youtube.com/c/GPTemplates
Kate Wharton https://www.instagram.com/katewharton27/?hl=en
Dani Hall https://x.com/danihalltweets and https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/
The books we recommended are:
Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan
Song of the Whole Wide World by Tamarin Norwood
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
In Memoriam by Alice Wynn
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li
The Trees by Percival Everett
Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris
Divided by Annabel Sowemimo
How to Save Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
Unheard by Rageshri Dhairyawan
Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdal
You be Mother by Meg Mason
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The books we are looking forward to are:
Heartstopper 6 by Alice Oseman
Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Book of Dust Trilogy by Philip Pullman
The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith
Tell me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
The 5th book in Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club Series
The Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel
Poems as Friends by Fiona Bennett
Kokoro by Beth Kempton
Microskills by Adaira Landry and Reesa E Lewiss
Your Worry Makes Sense Martin Brunet
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi -
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I imagine there may be lots of listeners who are very familiar with Marion Keyes and the Walsh family so it was a great joy today to be talking to Rosie Shire about the latest in the Walsh family saga, My Favourite Mistake by Marion Keyes. There is some typical Marion Keyes in that you know that nothing really, really bad is ever going to happen, that the plot is going to keep you going as you go along and there's going to be nothing truly miserable.
There's quite a lot of depth in this story as we follow Anna, 47, recently split from a long-term relationship, as she moves to small town Ireland from New York. What could possibly go wrong? Well, for a start, a local GP is not going to give her HRT.
Rosie and I had a great conversation about what it is to be middle aged, about relationships, about menopause, about access to HRT. I really hope you're going to enjoy listening to what we had to say.
We mentioned some menopause training resources:
https://thebms.org.uk/
https://www.fsrh.org/Public/Public/Education-and-Training/essentials-of-menopause-care.aspx
https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/
https://drjengunter.com/ -
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Today's book is one like nothing else I've ever read. It's a real treat to talk to liaison psychiatrist Amy Gledhill about In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Mercado. This is an extraordinary memoir. It is incredibly beautifully written and it is ostensibly about a controlling and abusive relationship with the complicating factor of being a queer relationship. There's much more to it than that. It is incredibly beautifully written, very very short chapters, so incredibly readable and
quick and though deep and one that you might well want to go back to again and again.
There is so much learning and reflection in the book and I've really really enjoyed exploring it with Amy. -
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It's a huge treat today to welcome Chella Quint OBE to Bedside Reading. Chella is a period activist and educator from Sheffield and she is the author of two absolutely wonderful books including Own Your Period: a fact-filled guide to period positivity which I think is quite possibly one of the best non-fiction books for young people that you could ever want to read. It is phenomenal for older people as well and for grown-ups, for doctors, for anybody, definitely definitely one to put on your Christmas list to give to lots of people. It's a book that debunks so many period myths and answers so many potentially unanswered questions.
I had a great conversation with Chella. Please do follow her period positive website https://periodpositive.com/
and and her social media:
https://www.instagram.com/period_positive/https://twitter.com/PeriodPositive
https://www.facebook.com/periodpositive/
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A warm welcome today to former GP and now headache specialist, Dr Janice Heath, who joins me today to talk about The Outrun, Amy Liptrot's memoir of alcoholism, addiction, recovery and living in Orkney. It's a really beautiful book which has been made into a very recent film starring Saoirse Ronan and the storytelling and the imagery in the book are absolutely stunning. (Janice has watched the film. I haven't yet. I've seen the trailers though and actually the images seem just as Amy describes them and in her beautiful, beautiful writing.) There's a lot to think about here in terms of thinking about addiction and recovery: addiction and the path through from chaos into something manageable. I really enjoyed talking to Janice much in the same way that I really enjoyed the book. -
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It's a welcome back today to psychiatrist Gill Patterson, who's here to talk about the Scottish Book Trust's Book Week Scotland publication of 2024, which is called Hope. This is a collection of true stories written by people from Scotland. The Scottish Book Trust produce 65,000 free copies of Hope which are available in Scotland or from the Scottish Book Trust website https://shop.scottishbooktrust.com/products/hope-book It was brilliant to talk to Gill both about her own story that is featured in this collection and about what this collection means and why the Scottish Book Trust are such a fabulous organisation.
We mentioned some resources around perinatal mental illness
RCGP perinatal toolkit https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=13115&chapterid=606
RCPsych https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and-mental-health-problems/post-natal-depression -
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It's a real joy today to welcome GP Eugenia Lee back to Bedside Reading to talk about Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See, which is a fabulous novel. It's historical fiction based on the true character of Tan Yunxian who was a doctor in 15th century China . She lived to the ripe age of about 92 and published a book of her cases in 1511. That book survived into the current day and Lisa See has picked that up, and what is known of Lady Tan and then created this fabulous historical novel. It's a really, really good read and I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Eugenia about it. -
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It was a huge honour to get an email from Rachel Zimmerman's publicist asking if I would consider reading a pre-publication copy of her new book, Us After, and to have Rachel on the show. Us After is the astonishing memoir of Rachel and her daughters' lives after the death of her husband Seth by suicide.
Before you think this is all going to be very, very depressing, it really isn't. It's an incredibly important and insightful book which Rachel describes as being "a little window for those people who say, 'I can't imagine what it must have been like'" because she wanted to give other people a sense it. There's family life. There are tears. There is the incomprehensible death of her beloved husband and through it so much optimism and hope and a sense of needing to move forwards. I absolutely loved Us, After and I have really, really enjoyed talking to Rachel. -
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Welcome to the first episode of season 8 of Bedside Reading!!
I am delighted today to welcome Martin Billington back to Bedside Reading to talk about you don't have to be mad to work here, the memoir of Benji Waterhouse, NHS psychiatrist and stand-up comedian.
It was great fun to hear Benji talk about his book and when I saw him live a couple of years ago and and I was really excited when the book came out that I really desperately wanted to read it. It didn't disappoint and it was really interesting to talk to Martin. We explore the power of humour, the power of black comedy, recognition of the stresses that people, particularly those working in mental health services, are under, and the value and power of storytelling to make sense of what is going on in our lives. It's a brilliant book and I really, really enjoyed talking to Martin about it.
Martin has his own podcast "So what happened to us all?" listen here: https://martinbillington1.podbean.com/ -
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It's a rewind episode today. I think lots of people have been watching the incredible season three of Heartstopper on Netflix. If you haven't, you certainly should. If you've not discovered Heartstopper at all, you've got such a treat if you want to binge all three series (or better still to pick up the wonderful graohic novels by Alive Oseman).
I've chosen to bring back an episode, an episode that's actually been one of the most downloaded episodes of Bedside Reading ever,and that is me talking to GP Ellie Corso about one of the Heartstopper associated novellas: This Winter. This short and brilliant novella features in series three of Heartstopper as one of the episodes, I think episode five in the current series. It is such a wonderful short novel, there is so much to talk about and I think with all the Heartstopper fever we have around at the moment it's only right to bring it back. Enjoy. -
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A warm welcome today to Rebecca Henleywillis, who describes herself as a "Patchwork GP". Listen on to find out what a patchwork GP is. (spoiler: I love the term and I think I'm going to start using it myself fairly soon.)
This is the final episode of season seven of Bedside Reading, and we are talking about Strong Female Character by Fern Brady. This is an astonishing memoir. Fern Brady is a comedian. Many of you may have seen her on Taskmaster. She is articulate. She is funny. She is capable. She is autistic.
This book explores her life, some of the challenges she's had, and her late diagnosis of autism. It was really, really good to talk to Rebecca and think particularly about autism in women but also autism as a later life diagnosis and thinking about adjustments, families, the myriad of ways that we can make things better or worse for people. We also spent some time thinking about autism in healthcare professionals and how easy it is to miss and how important it is to ask the right questions. I've loved revisiting this book and I've thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Rebecca. -
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Trigger warning: baby loss
This episode is especially for baby loss awareness week. Tamarin Norwood's incredible book about her son Gabriel
In the Lancet:Wakley Prize Essay in the Lancet (2021)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02690-8/fulltexthttps://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02797-5/fulltext
About the book online:
If you want to buy the book: https://theindigopress.com/product/the-song-of-the-whole-wide-world/)
(or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Whole-Wide-World-gut-wrenching/dp/191164873X)
Essay in the Sunday Times: https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/article/how-losing-my-baby-changed-my-idea-of-motherhood-r8jvdlcjb
Essay in the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/baby-loss-ronaldo-child-grief-b2060596.html
Reviews of the book in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/28/grieve-child-book-tamarin-norwood-memoir-pregnancy-death
the TLS: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-features/in-brief/the-song-of-the-whole-wide-world-tamarin-norwood-book-review-julia-bueno
and T&F journal Life Writing: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14484528.2024.2384755
The book and other writing-related work in healthcare:
THE SONG OF THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD been added to medical and midwifery curricula in the UK (Cambridge University and Warwick Med School) and in Australia (Newcastle School of Nursing and Midwifery), and is now gifted to bereaved families by one baby loss charity (Held In Our Hearts) and was a World Book Day recommendation by Sands, the UK's principal baby loss charity. It is the subject of two case studies exploring the role of literature in compassionate healthcare training, to be presented at the upcoming NHS NES Conference.'FROM THE HEART' NOTELETS are packs of note cards with memory and writing prompts for parents whose baby has sadly died. These were created by Tamarin Norwood and Scottish baby loss charity Held In Our Hearts with HEIC funding, and are now provided for bereaved parents across 5 NHS Boards in Scotland as part of their baby loss support, and are increasingly being taken up by hospitals in England including Great Ormond St Hospital.https://www.lboro.ac.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2023/march/baby-loss-writing-resources-tamarin-norwood-study/
I proposed these notecards in the following article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14484528.2021.1871705
Contact:
[email protected]
@TamarinNorwood on -
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It is a great pleasure today to welcome novelist Jane Campbell to Bedside Reading. Jane is here today to talk about her first novel: Interpretations of Love. Regular listeners may know that I've talked about one of Jane's books before, which is a short story collection called Cat Brushing, which I absolutely loved and it was a treat to be sent a copy of this new book by her publishers with an invitation to talk to Jane herself. Jane was a group analyst and then became a writer in her late 70s, publishing her first book in her 80s and I think she's a real inspiration that it's never too late to start writing but that also to remember that as we interact with people and as we work with them we will collect stories and we will get a better understanding of what a narrative is and different people's perspectives and that probably actually makes people better writers. It's been a real joy talking to Jane and I'm really hoping you're going to enjoy our conversation. -
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A warm welcome back today to Bedside Reading to Catriona Davis. This is Catriona's fourth time on the podcast, and it's a real treat to have her back. We're talking about All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett, which is an absolutely extraordinary memoir. It is a mixture of a book about plants, gardening, and apothecary garden. I hope I've said that right. It's a book about loss, about grief,
about social change, about expectations, rural poverty and having a child with a long-term condition. It's not an easy read and some of the themes that Catriona and I talk about today may be triggering for some listeners but I hope you'll enjoy our conversation. It's a book I would never in a million years have picked up had Catriona not suggested it to me but it's definitely one that's made me think and one I've really really enjoyed thinking about. -
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If I'm a bit overexcitable and squealy today, it's because I'm having a proper fangirl moment talking to Dr Lucy Pollock about her second book, The Golden Rule, Listens in Living from a Doctor of Ageing. Ever since I started this podcast, Lucy has been one of my dream guests, so today really has been a dream come true in that she's very generously given up her time to talk about her wonderful book but also to talk about what it is that she does.
It was such a joy to talk about why it is so important to focus on doing less better. Why it is so important that we really think holistically about people. and why we really need to start having conversations which might seem quite difficult. we explore those conversations which are absolutely vital and which are so well received by patients, particularly those who are older and those so who know what they want and they don't want and are at risk of being in a system which does things to them for the sake of it rather than because it's the right thing to do.
Follow Lucy on Twitter (X) here: https://x.com/lucypgeridoc
If you've not discovered Lucy's first book The Book About Getting Older it is absolutely wonderful too, you can listen to an episode of Bedside Reading from March 2024 when I discuss that book with GP Registrar Lauren Wallis here https://bedsidereading.buzzsprout.com/1880290/episodes/14670381-the-book-about-getting-older -
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It's a first on bedside reading today in that I've got three guests rather than my customary one and occasional two. I am delighted to welcome to the podcast Beth Osmond, Eleanor Holmes and Sarah Raybould, three doctors who are also published poets. We are going to be talking today about Kathryn Bevis's beautiful collection, The Butterfly House, which on the cover is described as "the story of a life before and after a late stage cancer diagnosis". In the podcast today, we've chosen to focus on three of the cancer poems from this beautiful little book.
I would like to point out though that there are lots of other poems in the collection which are perhaps less dark and more reflective of Kathryn Bevis's wonder with life, the importance of living and really that theme of living with a long-term condition, recognising cancer as a life-changing and potentially life-limiting condition. but something that people are more and more living with rather than necessarily being cured of or dying from. It's a wonderful collection and it is moving, it is thought-provoking, it is funny. I really enjoyed it and I've really loved my conversation today with Beth, Eleanor and Sarah.
If you'd like to follow any of these wonderful poets
Find Sarah here:
https://www.instagram.com/raybould_sarah/
https://underneaththisskin.comFind Beth here:
https://twitter.com/bethosmond
https://www.instagram.com/osmond_beth/
Find Eleanor here:
https://twitter.com/eliot_north
https://www.dreleanorholmes.com/
and if you'd like to buy a copy of this gorgeous collection please order direct from Seren Books here https://www.serenbooks.com/book/the-butterfly-house/ -
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I am so delighted to be talking to Emily Katy, the author of Girl Unmasked: How Uncovering My Autism Saved My Life. I love talking to authors. I'm always fascinated to be talking to authors who are also health professionals. Emily is both: a psychiatric nurse and a writer. I've been following Emily on social media for quite a while, I was really excited when her book came out to see what it was going to be like because I'd read her blog and I'd seen a lot of other articles that she'd written. It was a real joy today to meet her properly and to be talking about her book, why she wrote her book, about her life experiences and thinking a lot about autistic women and autistic girls, why they get missed, why it is important that we think about autism and why the stereotypes that many of us have been brought up on are quite simply wrong and mean that people go without a diagnosis and unnoticed.
Follow Emily on Twitter https://twitter.com/ItsEmilyKaty
and on instagram https://www.instagram.com/itsemilykaty
Her brilliant blog is here: https://www.authenticallyemily.uk/
Emily is a trustee of the brilliant charity Autistic Girls Network find them here: https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/ -
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I've got two brilliant guests with me to today, Roo Shah and Jens Foell, who have written a phenomenal book called Fighting for the Soul of General Practice: the Algorithm will see you now. This is a wonderful book, two GPs, one based in London, one based in rural North Wales writing about patient stories and the values of relational medicine, thinking about what we are at risk of losing as we try wholly appropriately to manage demand, to keep services running when there isn't enough money and there aren't enough staff.
But what we're losing by doing it, and whether in fact it's okay to stand up and say, "I don't want to be replaced by a computer". I've long said that the things that are of the most value are those which are not directly measurable and so I absolutely loved Jens and Roo's book. It's very, very readable and it'll make you think, but it won't hurt your head. It's not difficult. It's not dense text. They are both phenomenal storytellers, and this is really about stories and the value of what lies beneath the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg perhaps being a diagnosis but recognising there is so so much more going on and really what we risk losing if we don't remember that.
I love the book and I have really really enjoyed talking to Jens and Roo and I would really strongly encourage you to go and buy yourself a copy of this book as soon as you possibly can.
Roo mentions the brilliant short story The Machine Stops by E M Forster you can read it online here: http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/59/59.pdf -
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A warm welcome back today to James Thambirajah, who is here to talk to me about a book called Heart, a History by Sandip Jauhar. This is, I will confess, a book that I probably might not have picked up voluntarily but James is very persuasive, and I'm really glad I did pick it up, because once I had I was absolutely compelled to keep reading. Sandip Jawa is a wonderful writer. He's a cardiologist based in the USA. And this interweaves stories, stories of people, stories of Sandeep's own life, story of patients, stories of his family, with the history of cardiology. The history of cardiology. I didn't really know a huge amount about the history of cardiology it is just fascinating to realise how far we've come over the last 50 or 100 years. I'm really thinking about the bravery of the people who chose to give up everything to explore what they thought might be going on. We've got stories of young doctors passing wires into their own arms and legs in the earliest angiograms. We've got prototype bypass machines being built. We've got people making cardiac pacemakers in their kitchens. It's absolutely incredible, really, really exciting. And I would say I'm not even particularly interested in cardiology, but this is holistic cardiology. This is the history of medicine with some cardiology and some humanity and thinking about hearts in the sense of the heart and soul of a person. It's a cracking read and I've loved talking to James about it. -
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It's a warm welcome back to a guest today. I'm delighted to be talking to Susan Matthew about Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. Susan came on the podcast a couple of years ago and I got an email from her out of the blue recently saying, "I've just read this book, it's absolutely brilliant, I think you'd really like it and I really need to talk about it on the podcast" and I was really quite intrigued. I picked it up and it said on the cover that it was a crime novel and my heart slightly sank because I'm not a huge crime fan. But actually, I'm not convinced that this book is a crime novel. It's just a brilliant, brilliant novel with some twists and turns along the way. Maybe that's how you define what crime is....
There are loads of themes in here. It's a great book. Lots and lots of things to think about: adverse childhood experiences, the power of community, the importance of transitional objects, how we learn, whether labels matter. There is so much to talk about and so much to think about, and I really enjoyed talking to Susan. - Laat meer zien
