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Abbey

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Abbey is Currently Reading

Abbey is currently reading

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

by Sheri Fink

bookshelves: read-2022, popsugar-2022, also-a-movie, antiracism, audiobook, health-and-medicine, history-american, my-audible-library, new-orleans, politics, women, true-crime, reviewed-books, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in October 2022

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Abbey said: " POPSUGAR 2022: A book featuring a man-made disaster

I don't recall this book's release, which is curious, considering that New Orleans has become ingrained in my DNA. Maybe I didn't want to know about the actual horrors that my heart knew occurred in POPSUGAR 2022: A book featuring a man-made disaster

I don't recall this book's release, which is curious, considering that New Orleans has become ingrained in my DNA. Maybe I didn't want to know about the actual horrors that my heart knew occurred in that broken, beautiful city so close to my heart.

I watched the limited series on Apple TV+, and knew I had to read this book. I knew this part of town; I have most likely passed this hospital a thousand times, but it never really registered to me (when I was a student at Tulane, only two New Orleans hospitals were on my radar: Tulane and Charity).

Whenever I encounter a story of Katrina, I parallel my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. When the storm was approaching, I was concerned, but not panicked. The Storm would likely turn at the last minute and hit Mobile; hurricanes always turned at the last minute to hit Mobile.

At Memorial (or Baptist, as old timers would always call the hospital), community members filled the waiting rooms and corridors, with beer coolers and their pets, thinking they would shelter there for about 24 hours or so before returning to their storm-bruised homes.

Hospital staffers checked on their patients, including chronically ill patients bused over from an affiliated nursing home -- the patients would be safer in the hospital than at the smaller nursing facility.

Dr. Fink takes us on a horrific journey through Memorial Hospital in the days preceding and after The Storm.

What happened at Memorial was a microcosm of what happened in New Orleans: clerical and procedural breakdowns led to unimaginable suffering, unused resources lay waste, and sick, poor, often Black people were marginalized and eventually murdered by the people meant to care for and protect them.

People entered The Storm, anticipating a difficult few days, not knowing that they could lose their family members, their dignity, their homes, or their lives. Most of that loss was preventable, but due to bureaucracy, corruption, racism, ableism, healthism, and even the tyranny of religion we have a Russian doll of continually unfolding terror that was unleashed onto a glorious city and her remarkable people. ...more "

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(page 460 of 18)
— Oct 24, 2022 01:51PM

Jan 17, 2023 10:15AM · see review

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Little Girl Lost: The Life & Hard Times of Judy Garland

by Al DiOrio

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Jun 09, 2026 08:56AM

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The Second Sex

by Simone de Beauvoir

bookshelves: women, currently-reading

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(60%)
— Apr 13, 2026 12:55PM

Mar 20, 2026 07:36AM

See all 8 books that Abbey is reading…

Abbey’s Notes & Highlights

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

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My memories

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Abbey’s Quotes

“Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.”
― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

tags: happiness

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“This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go.”
― Oscar Wilde

tags: last-words, taste, wallpaper

806 likes

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

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“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.”
― Carrie Fisher

tags: art, life

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“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

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