Preview by Mary Kat

I have two new books that I’m feeling all the hype for and wanted to share with y’all. I don’t always jump on the literary bandwagon or get lost in the hype — usually I can resist. I’ve even been known to wait patiently for my turn on library lists of >100 people on hold. But in both these cases, my hype outweighed my patience.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood came out today, and I had mine on pre-order from Amazon. Some folks actually received their pre-order several days ago (so weird right?), but mine arrived today as promised. I’ve been a big fan of Margaret Atwood for a long time, and I read The Handmaid’s Tale back in high school. I actually re-read it again last year because of the excitement around the Hulu TV series. I don’t watch the TV show anymore because it’s too violent for me, but I love all the attention the show has given to Margaret Atwood, deservedly. She’s a powerful writer — very creative, poetic, feminist, and prolific. And I can’t wait to see what original spins she’ll have it store for this follow-up in Gilead.

Margaret Atwood’s style is very unique — she has a beautiful writing voice, but her storytelling is a league of its own. She has an ability to create universes and stories unlike any I’ve ever read before. The MaddAddam trilogy is a great example of this: insanely creative, bizarre, and futuristic. She often describes her style as “speculative fiction” to express a sort of elevated or literary science fiction category. All that to say, I’m very excited to check this one out, and I wanted to get The Testaments as soon as possible to avoid spoilers.

The second book is likely more niche, but I am super excited about it all the same. Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries by Lisa Sanders, MD is a collection of the best cases from the New York Times Diagnosis column. In that column, readers play House and try to solve the diagnosis of a complicated and mysterious patient presentation. It’s a thrill and challenge among doctors to solve this type of case, and it’s even better when I can try to solve it from the comfort of reading on my couch.

I love everything about this idea — I loved House because he’s the endlessly witty and clever Sherlock Holmes of medicine (mind you, I watched this before I went to medical school, so inaccuracies were nothing to me then). And I love medical school now because I love to help patients and solve the puzzles of their health and disease. I often fantasize about helping a patient by making a career find of a difficult, surprising, or rare diagnosis. So this book is made for me: solving puzzles of the most difficult real-life cases — what could be better than that? I’ve only just started Diagnosis, so I don’t know yet how it will read for folks outside the medical community. But I will try to keep that in mind as I read and let you know soon!

I entered a competition on GoodReads for a free copy of Diagnosis, but then couldn’t resist and went ahead and bought it. Of course, ironically, I won the competition on GoodReads (my first win) and now have two copies! Double the excitement for double the copies, I suppose!

Let me know if you are excited about either of these! I would love to hear your thoughts!