WWWWF:Write and Wrong
Author's narrative taking too technical a turn
I've enjoyed How Doctors Think for the most part so far, but there's been a creeping increase in the use of clinical writing that's starting to turn me off of the tome. Author Jerome Groopman has done a superb job conveying how hospitals and physicians work and face challenges, but too often the prose goes into a set pattern. This wouldn't be a big deal if the book were meant for other doctors, but Groopman claims the book is meant for laypeople.
For instance, Groopman always seems to start a new topic with an almost rote descriptive style:
Ever since he was a little boy, Brad Miller loved to run.
Antecdotes are nice ways to introduce topics, but each new subject seems to start with that kind of one-line hook followed by a description of the person and elaborating on their background. It's a very newspaper-esque, featurey style that just drags at times. He could start with describing the physiology of a disease, its history, focusing on a particular characteristic of the person's physicality, just anything to break the monotone. I just wish he'd break out of the box some.