The Green Bookshop

John Salinsky with Iona Heath and Mary Salinsky
Radcliffe, Oxford (2009)
158 pp.
ISBN: 978 184619 330 9

Every now and again I come across an extraordinary book that changes in some ways how I think, and this is one of those books.

It is hard to describe because at a basic level it appears strange that it exists at all; it is basically a book of book reviews, and how useful could that possibly be? The principal author, as well as one ‘with’ author, are general practitioners working in North London, and the third is currently a PhD scholar and presumably, given the clue of surnames, related to the first.

The Green Bookshop is a clearly real and special place, especially for people seeking unusual books to assist them in medical practice, so although it does have a range of clinical texts, they are not the usual text books. The bookshop carries a select range of other books as well – novels, anything well written, biographies, anything about gritty women, love, the classics: books that possibly might assist doctors in better caring for their patients. These selections, I am sure, could be extended to include most health care providers.

To return to the book, the authors have included a selection of reviews of a wide range of books and short stories. The book is organised in a similar way to the Bookshop – so the chapters of the book include reviews of, for example, books that won prizes, books that should have won prizes, some classic novels, films that were made from excellent books, a collection of biographies and memoirs, and a few chapters about general practice and primary health care.

I started to read this book with the intention of giving it to someone else to review, but found I could not stop reading it. I spent some wonderful hours remembering some books I love, finding books I have meant to read and will come back to, films I must now find to watch, short stories for late night reading, biographies for plane journeys. And I hope I have found another way to try to get some of my students to read more widely and more critically, and to think about ways of seeing the world through other lenses and hearing stories told in less familiar words.

And I would love to meet the authors!

Thank you for this great little book.

Priscilla Robinson
Senior Lecturer
School of Health Sciences
La Trobe University