Medical journalist Dasha Sargsyan about favorite books

IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, medical journalist, Meduza editor, co-founder of the Namochi Manta telegram channel Dasha Sargsyan shares her stories about favorite books.

Mom says that I learned to read in three and a half years. In childhood, it was a special pleasure to take five books in the library for two weeks and bring them on time, without prolonging anything. Over time, this turned into some kind of ridiculous sport: I sobbed if my parents forbade me to finish reading half the chapters left to the end of the book, and put me to bed. The librarians knew me by sight and certainly didn’t like me: I didn’t leave them alone until they searched all the archives and made sure that there were no such publications from the summer literature list. In the seventh grade, I got to "Crime and Punishment" and thought I understood him. The only thing that was knocked out of such a marathon was the encyclopedia. I liked to overlap them when I did my homework, and read about the same thing in different books, adding new details to my knowledge. Here it was no longer a matter of reading speed, but something new, which was put off in my head. I had a whole collection of encyclopedias "I Know the World". I think that the book "Signs and Superstitions" was the first to explain to me the advantages of a scientific approach.

At journalism, I finally realized that relations with fiction did not exist. I have read the Iliad completely, I still do not understand why. Among all the rest, too, there was little sympathetic: from Hemingway’s style I simply turned up, Shukshin’s stories caused deaf anger, and if something good came up, then it was necessary to read it very quickly, because everyone traditionally works at journalism from who do not have free time (although, they say, now everything has changed).

I liked nauchpop much more. It was pure knowledge, useful, which you can "touch". What will change in your life if you read the Idiot? In my from fiction never changed anything, at least for a long time. At some point I answered all the important questions for myself and stopped rushing and looking for solutions in books. In the last courses I began to practice medical journalism, not being a doctor or a biologist. Knowledge was sorely lacking, and therefore I endlessly read (and still read) scientific books and popular (or not very popular) books about medicine. And yet, of course, the articles - I have saved a great many in Pocket, and I love to sort them by topic: "But I read everything today about organ transplantation." With time, too, I began to buy books mostly in electronic form - I don’t know what I would do without my Kindle.

Sometimes I get tired of describing operations and biochemical processes and ask my best friend to advise something. He is in my life responsible for humanities education, although he graduated from math school (an interesting twist, because I have been studying in the humanities class during my last school years). And I, in general, never disappointed. For example, read Gladwell, "Nobrow" Sibruka and Strugatsky.

I enjoy reading so much that I do it everywhere. I can come to the party, and, if I don’t know anyone, and my friends are late, then I just pull out a book: why pull the glass and pretend that you are having fun with yourself? In a taxi, the same thing: if I get pissed off by talking, then I lift the book higher so that it can be seen - I am busy. Once I was riding a bus in my native Adygea and, of course, I read. The driver asked me to close the book and look around - there were fields around and sunny weather in general. It was supposed that I would start to enjoy all this and feel the real life. The problem was that I drove along this route every day to school and it did not cause me any pleasant feelings. The effect that the driver wanted to achieve did not happen - I just spent fifteen minutes of my life looking at the cows. In my ideal day, reading takes the lion’s share, and every day I try to make at least a little perfect.

Vikenty Veresaev

"Notes doctor"

I read this book when I first started practicing medical journalism, and then I was impressed for a long time. It was difficult to understand how you can go to medicine at all if you do harm to someone anyway, if they hate you, even when you have done everything possible. There is some kind of hopelessness, on the one hand, but on the other, you understand that all that remains is to accept all this and do what you do well. There is no other way, globally you will not change anything. The book was written a hundred years ago, but it’s still about us. Something more like her more modern "Do no harm" to Henry Marsh. The author is a neurosurgeon who not only saved lives, but was also mistaken. During his work, he made a lot of hard decisions, and no one has the answer whether they were right.

Rafael Honigstein

"German football car"

For me, this book is primarily about courage, love for his work and some kind of unity, or something. I didn’t understand for a long time why big sport was needed at all, but then I met a man who spoke so enthusiastically about the “best in the world” German football that he immediately fell in love. And for several years every weekend I watch matches of my favorite team. It really inspires and supports me in difficult moments. How to live after you lost to your main competitor 1: 5? How to find the strength to reach the finals of the World Championship through tough matches, beat the critics in the breaks and win? What if you are doing your best in training, but continue to sit in a deep reserve in your favorite team? And these tens of thousands of fans in the stadium who support the players, even when they fail terribly.

This book is also about how the entire German football was rebuilt, in order to engage in the professional sport even those guys who live in remote villages, and how to make the sport more intelligent and catchy. These undertakings had not so many supporters, and throughout the whole journey there was a bunch of people who were against. But everything turned out well, and the German national team, like the German Bundesliga, is what the whole country loves now.

Elena Pavlova

"Lymphocyte Tamers and Other Unofficial Persons"

This is one of the funniest books I've read, plus it’s about medicine. There are many funny stories from the life of the laboratory in a Czech clinic. I can not say that this book has changed something in me, but for some reason people are watching the TV series "Friends." There are many strange, but very close, and by the end completely loved characters who continue to communicate, despite each other's pens, arrange pranks and lead witty dialogues. This book is a good help to forget if there is some incessant nightmare in life.

Its only negative - it quickly ends. After that, you can switch to Batista Beaulieu's A Thousand and One Night Emergency Department The book may be a little different in mood (after all, someone dies here regularly), but in some places it is funny and also distracts well from circulating thoughts. Another option is “The Young Years of Parovozov’s Medical Officer,” Alexey Motorov. There, too, it is easy to fall in love with the heroes and it is difficult to break away from reading. And these are not books with bikes (I also read such ones and I cannot advise) - these are whole works that help to fall in love with people, if earlier there were difficulties with this. Now Elena Pavlova works in a children's hospital and occasionally continues to write great posts on Facebook about what she does. True, sometimes the lyrics come out sad.

Mary roach

"Sex for science. Science for sex"

I know only two authors of scientific publications, who write about personal experiences in such a way that it is always very relevant. In all other cases, it only causes anger because of the time wasted on some memoirs and awkwardness because of the narcissism of the author. The two writers I’m talking about are Mary Roach and AJ Jacobs. Each time they thoroughly study the topic, ask scientists and doctors tons of stupid questions and agree to the most daring experiments on themselves. If we talk about health, then Jacobs has an excellent book “Until death is healthy” about how he followed all the tips of the asylum seekers (by turns) for two years and what hell this led to. Roach has one of my favorite books - "Sex for science. Science for sex." It is based on her speech Roach TED. It seems to me that this book makes it easier to treat sex — as a normal process, like swimming or eating food. And this, in turn, can lead to positive changes in life.

Leonard Mlodinov

"(Not) perfect coincidence: how chance controls our life"

When I was a teenager and even already a student, it was interesting for me to look for all kinds of signs in life, to make important decisions based on them and to think that everything is interconnected. Then it came to some kind of absurdity. For example, the trainer who taught me to fly on a paraglider and who was very cute to me at first, said that there is no wind, “because you are a heavy man, and you have heavy thoughts”. And somewhere in this period, Mlodinov’s book came into my hands. In high school, I loved mathematics and even went to the Olympiad, so the Mlodinovo approach to explaining events made me remember this addiction.

First, talking about probability theory and other branches of mathematics in relation to life, Mlodinov completely discourages the desire to see all sorts of mystical relationships between what is happening. Secondly, it helps well, what is called, to accept and relax. You can be well done, work hard, eat fruits and vegetables every day, but at the same time you will be ahead of the mediocre dumbfounded, and doctors from the district clinic will greet you on the street. It happens, and a person is not guilty - he cannot control most of what happens in this life at all. In general, "(Not) perfect coincidence" cleans brains and brings up a scientific approach to everything.

Ben Goldacre

"Cheating in science"

I think this book should be introduced into the school curriculum. Ben Goldacre is a well-known popularizer of science, he is always very cheerfully talking about how good evidence actually looks, why alternative medicine “works” and how to filter information in general. I have long wanted to read this book, but I managed to find it with difficulty and only in paper form. The case when you read and understand: everyone should know this. If people on the whole were aware of why, for example, the phrase “scientists proved” doesn’t mean anything at all, then we would have fewer charlatans, and unscrupulous journalists would migrate to another area in disgrace where it’s not necessary to check the facts. .

For me, this book has become a good support: sometimes it seems that there are only a handful of like-minded people and in general everything is wasted. But when you read about the adventures of Dr. Goldacre, you realize that you are in a good big company. With jokes, he tells how he is endlessly sued by charlatans, whom he tirelessly exposes, tells how he hammer and hammer in one point and this sometimes leads to results. And if it does not, it is not a reason to drop everything. But those who do not work in scientific or medical journalism will probably be more interested in the scientific approach to everyday life and how representatives of alternative medicine try to manipulate us, hordes of unqualified nutritionists who promote detox, and many others.

Arthur Haley

"Final Diagnosis"

Hayley need to take over the book when there is a lot of time, because it is quite difficult to break away from them. For example, his book "Airport", where the central event, for a minute - the bombing of an airplane, I started reading shortly before the flight to Vietnam and could not stop in the airplane. "Potent Medicine", "Hotel", "Final Diagnosis" (the full version is called "Clinic: Anatomy of Life") - all these are books about very narrow areas that you regularly come across, but have no idea how they work. Since you do not know, delayed departure or long-term doubts of doctors about the diagnosis cause you resentment.

But if you find out the reasons, you should feel better, because it usually happens not because of someone's laziness or stupidity - these are just circumstances. Haley describes in detail the work of each participant in the process: from the cleaner to the director or the head physician, and this is very conducive to mutual understanding. This is also close to me because in many ways this approach is similar to my work: I explain in articles and a blog why it’s normal if the doctor starts to google with you, or why you don’t want to be hospitalized (and most often they do it right).

Paul de Cruy

"Microbe Hunters"

It is unfortunate that I did not read this book as a teenager: I think I would have liked it. These are stories about the discoverers of pathogenic bacteria and parasites - these people really were very brave, just like Cook or Magellan. They fought for their ideas with a conservative society, patiently set up experiments, spread knowledge, despite ridicule, and even risked their lives and died during research. When you read such books, you get a little sanding and try to throw out everything in your life that resembles cowardice. Well, it is useful to remind ourselves that the authorities are of little importance: even if a person is a professor and a member of various academies, this does not give him the right to call any unsympathetic idea nonsense, he must always give evidence.

Albert Axelrod

"Reanimation without sensations"

Once I interviewed a resuscitator, and he said that in the third grade I read Albert Axelrod's book “Reanimation without sensations” about working in the intensive care unit, caught fire and eventually learned to be a doctor. It became interesting to me, I found this book (the second edition came out in the year of my birth) in some semi-basement room of a second-hand bookstore on Kievskaya, I read and understood what it was about.

After that, I interviewed another anesthesiologist and resuscitation specialist and only in the process I realized that it was not by chance that his name was Axelrod too. It was the son of Albert Yul'evich, he, like his father, went to medicine, to the area that is so romantic and at the same time truthfully described in "Reviving Without Sensations." To be honest, I didn’t expect such simplicity, sincerity and wit from the Soviet book about saving lives. Since then, I like to read the old nauchnopop: first, you understand that there have always been the same problems and they are not going anywhere, no matter how much you want. Secondly, it is interesting to know the story. For example, already then there were computer tomographs (always considered them to be something more or less modern). Or, for example, in the book there is a description of how doctors got out when there were no artificial respiration devices, how they looked for the right solutions and how they came to them.

Charles dahigg

"The power of habit. Why we live and work this way and not otherwise"

I can’t say that this book has changed me a lot or made me get rid of some kind of habit, but there are a lot of interesting stories and high-quality journalistic work. Particularly interesting are the notes where Dahigg writes how he managed to find out all this. Sometimes it covers sympathy, because, as a journalist, you encounter these difficulties all the time, albeit on a smaller scale. I think if you want to use this book for its intended purpose and get rid of some habit, you will succeed: there is everything for that.