Each month, Look Who’s Talking features voices from across BWH answering the same question. This month, BWHers tell us what’s on their summer reading list. If you would like to add your voice to the conversation, please submit a comment at the bottom of the page.

Karen Bruynell

“Summer is always such a great time to feel the warm breeze under the shade of a tree and just lose yourself in a good book. This summer, I’m looking forward to reading a few novels with no specific genre, including ‘Grit’ by Angela Duckworth, ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng, ‘The Great Alone’ by Kirstin Hannah, ‘Pachinko’ by Min Jin Lee and ‘Wolf Hall’ by Hilary Mantel.”

-Karen Bruynell, MM, C-TAGME, Administrative Director, Brigham Education Institute

Alex Turchin

“I am reading ‘The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story’ by Hyeonseo Lee. It provides a great insight into the North Korean society – made even more relevant by the current high-stakes negotiations between our countries’ leaders. It serves as a timely reminder of how people’s lives, aspirations and worldview can be distorted and controlled by a totalitarian regime.”

-Alex Turchin, MD, MS, Director of Quality in Diabetes, Department of Medicine

Jessica Dudley

“I am currently reading ‘Team of Teams’ by General Stanley McChrystal. This book describes experiences and events from military operations, aviation and health care (including some examples from our own institution), and argues that addressing challenges of an increasingly complex world requires new approaches. He makes the case for a ‘team of teams’ approach, where empowering smaller groups to solve problems and then coordinate and collaborate across the institution drives better outcomes than the more traditional top-down approach.”

-Jessica Dudley, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization, Vice President of Care Redesign, Brigham Health

Allison Moriarty

“I picked up ‘The Great Alone’ by Kristin Hannah and spent a day devouring it. I highly recommend it. It’s a novel about a young girl who moves to Alaska with her parents and their struggle to survive – the wilds of remote Alaska and the darkness within her father who came back from Vietnam a broken man. A great read by the same author who wrote “The Nightingale,” which is also great!”

-Allison Moriarty, MS, Vice President of Research Administration and Compliance

Sunil Eappen

“Asking me what’s on my list is a loaded question! My friends know that I’m always looking for their recommendations and have a very long reading list – I probably have 100 books on my Kindle wish list at any given time. I typically read two to three fiction books for every nonfiction book I read, and I read every night.

So, here’s what I’m recommending that I’ve read recently: The ‘Red Sparrow’ trilogy by Jason Matthews (really fun Russian/American spy-thriller series), ‘Euphoria’ by Lily King (a little more serious, but still fun), ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr (brilliant and beautiful historical fiction), ‘The Nightingale’ by Kristin Hannah (beautiful historical fiction about France during the German invasion), ‘When Breath Becomes Air’ by Paul Kalanithi (all of us should read this beautiful story written by a neurosurgeon describing his own death) and ‘Democracy’ by Condoleezza Rice (a serious constitutional book about governance and our democracy from the U.S. Constitution era to present day).”

-Sunil Eappen, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs

Jie Zhou

“I look forward to reading or listening to ‘The Gene: An Intimate History’ by Siddhartha Mukherjee and ‘Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think’ by Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Ola Rosling. They are both about history and progress, how and what we have learned about nature, the human world and the interface of the two. They are both written by physicians, so I am interested in how they dedicate themselves to educating the public about science and technology as well as practicing medicine. And they are both highly recommended by my wife, who listened to the audiobooks recently.”

-Jie Zhou, MD, MS, MBA, Assistant Professor of Anesthesia, Department of Anesthesiology, Peroperative and Pain Medicine