Good Reads and Good Eats discussion

Hey ladies!!
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season/break and that your new year is starting off right.
Below is a list of four books for our March meeting. I've chosen two books from another series of Alexander McCall Smith - it's the first and second book in that series but we can always skip book one and read book two. My vote is for choice A.

Happy voting! :)
Monica S.

a) Monday Mornings / Sanjay Gupta
Every time surgeons operate, they're betting their skills are better than the brain tumor, the faulty heart valve, the fractured femur. Sometimes, they're wrong. At Chelsea General, surgeons answer for bad outcomes at the Morbidity and Mortality conference, known as M & M. This extraordinary peek behind the curtain into what is considered the most secretive meeting in all of medicine is the back drop for the entire book.

Monday Mornings, by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, follows the lives of five surgeons at Chelsea General as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings, often in front of their peers at M & M. It is on Monday mornings that reflection and introspection occurs, usually in private. It is Monday Mornings that provides a unique look at the real method in which surgeons learn - through their mistakes. It is Monday Mornings when, if you're lucky, you have a chance at redemption.

b) Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic / John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor
Based on two highly acclaimed PBS documentaries watched by 10 million viewers, "Affluenza uses the whimsical metaphor of a disease to tackle a very serious subject: the damage done -- to our health, our families, our communities, and our environment -- by the obsessive quest for material gain. In cleverly titled chapters like "Swollen Expectations" and "A Rash of Bankruptcies," the authors examine the origins, evolution, and symptoms of the affluenza epidemic. Yet they also explore cures and suggest strategies for rebuilding families and communities and for restoring and respecting the earth.

Demonstrating that now, more than ever, Americans need ways of fighting the affliction, this edition includes a new introduction and updated figures, adds information on the impacts of stress and overwork, and provides an in-depth look at various campaigns and movements offering solutions for today's problems. Engaging, fast-paced, and accessible, it reexamines a serious, far-reaching issue for a wide audience.

c) The Sunday Philosophy Club / Alexander McCall Smith
Amateur sleuth Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher who also uses her training to solve unusual mysteries. Isabel is Editor of the Review of Applied Ethics – which addresses such questions as ‘Truth telling in sexual relationships’ – and she also hosts The Sunday Philosophy Club at her house in Edinburgh. Behind the city’s Georgian facades its moral compasses are spinning with greed, dishonesty and murderous intent. Instinct tells Isabel that the young man who tumbled to his death in front of her eyes at a concert in the Usher Hall didn’t fall. He was pushed.

With Isabel Dalhousie Alexander McCall Smith introduces a new and pneumatic female sleuth to tackle murder, mayhem – and the mysteries of life. As her hero WH Auden maintained, classic detective fiction stems from a desire for an uncorrupted Eden which the detective, as an agent of God, can return to us. But then Isabel, being a philosopher, has a thing or two to say about God as well.

d) Friends, Lovers, Chocolate / Alexander McCall Smith
In this second novel in the Sunday Philosophy Club, Isabel Dalhousie’s niece, Cat (she of the unsuitable boyfriends) is invited to a wedding in Italy. This means that Isabel is left in charge of Cat’s delicatessen – a task to which the redoutable moral philosopher proves more than equal. She is intrigued by the customers, of course, given her irrepressible tendency to take an interest in the business of others, and one man in particular attracts her attention. He is recovering from heart surgery – a heart transplant in fact – and when Isabel gets to know him a bit better he reveals an extraordinary aspect of being the recipient of another’s heart. Isabel is drawn into an investigation of the facts behind the transplant, with disturbing results. Her enquiries take time, but not so much time as to prevent romantic entanglements, both for Isabel and her housekeeper, Grace. And as for chocolate – that proves to have some very interesting philosophical ramifications – at least in the mind of Isabel Dalhousie. Chocolate is a moral problem, it transpires – invoking questions of temptation and, of course, human weakness. We are all weak when it comes to chocolate, Isabel decides – should we just accept the fact and get on with it?