Also of interest. . .

Final Exam

by Pauline W. Chen (Vintage, $14)

Every medical student in the country would benefit from reading this frank and eloquent memoir, said Claire Panosian Dunavan in the Los Angeles Times. “In graceful, lucid prose,” surgeon Pauline Chen recounts how her training and experience taught her to keep death at arm’s length—until she realized that patients needed more guidance during their final days. Chen’s eloquent argument for better end-of-life care will stir older doctors, too. “My heart leapt more than once” as her recollections stirred vivid memories of my own training.

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Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra (Harper Perennial, $17)

Here was a 2007 novel that fully deserved the word “Dickensian,” said Charles Taylor in Newsday. Vikram Chandra’s 1,000-page tale of “a cop and the Mr. Big he pursues” can make you feel “as if every teeming inch of Bombay were between the covers you hold in your hand.”

The Catastrophist

by Ronan Bennett (Bloomsbury, $15)

Two lovers reunite in 1960 Belgian Congo in this decade-old political novel by the Irish novelist Ronan Bennett, said Amanda Heller in The Boston Globe. Though both the protagonists are writers, “they see through different eyes,” and this reissue of Bennett’s Whitbread finalist proves that their story remains timely. “Just as there must always be lovers doomed to disappointment, there will always be battered lands where freedom is the dream and civil war the brutal reality.”

The Brain That Changes Itself

by Norman Doidge (Penguin, $16)

Psychiatrist Norman Doidge is “the best possible guide” a reader could have to the emerging science of neuroplasticity, said Jessica Warner in the Toronto Globe and Mail. In his “fluent and unassuming style,” Doidge explains clearly how the human brain can rewire itself when required, and the case studies he shares are fascinating. His portraits of other scientists may be clichéd, but he tells each patient’s story “with great compassion and sensitivity.”

Brooklyn Was Mine

Edited by Chris Knutsen and Valerie Steiker (Riverhead, $15)

Brooklyn’s reputation as a haven for self-indulgent writers won’t be helped by this essay collection, said Brian Braiker in Time Out New York. Despite the book’s “heavy-hitting” lineup of contributors, its two most compelling essays feature the voices of a World War II–era shipyard worker and a driver named Eli Miller who’s been delivering seltzer to Brooklyn homes for 47 years. When the writers themselves start sharing their thoughts, they almost invariably “look navel-ward.”