World Cancer Day is on the 4th Feb so for this month’s Desert Island Books we have Leanne Edwards as our Castaway to talk about her role with the Macmillan Information and Support Service at NUH and sharing her inspirational reads.
Heya, I’m Leanne and I work within NUH as a Macmillan Cancer Information Officer at the Macmillan Information & Support Service at both City Hospital and QMC. We provide practical, financial and emotional support to anyone affected by cancer at any stage of the journey and beyond on a drop in basis with no referrals needed, this includes supporting staff. My focus is on Holistic Needs Assessments for Carers which is a space for carers who are looking after someone with cancer to focus on things that are important to them/things they are struggling with and we do a personalised care plan with them to help find solutions and support.
I’ve worked for the trust since March 2022, and worked alongside NUH as a Hospital Social Worker before this for just over 11 years. I recently joined the NUH library and am really impressed at the range of resources that are accessible, which I’m sure will really help me with my work with carers and any future projects.
Picking books has been a challenge as I loved reading but after years of studying I found I scan read and didn’t always take everything in and I still do this sometimes. Since the pandemic I started reading graphic novels/comics too as like a lot of people my mental health was impacted and I couldn’t concentrate on things that were too wordy. However, a lot of these are multi-volume or short so I’ve not put these in as I’d run out of stuff quickly on a desert island!
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
I will admit I watched the film first when I was about 17 and absolutely loved it, so I thought I’d better read the book and have read it many many times since! The book centres on a depressed, insomniac man who ends up meeting a salesman, Tyler Durden and together they create an underground club … the first rule of this club is that you can’t talk about it (nerdy reference for anyone that’s seen/read it!) and things get a bit chaotic from there!
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy
A friend bought this for me when I was having a hard time and I found it really helpful as a reminder that not everything in the world is grim even when it can feel like it. It’s about friendship, life and kindness – to ourselves and others. What I really like is that it’s a mixture of pictures and not lots of words, so is accessible to a lot of people. You don’t even have to read it front to back. I often just pick it up, look at a random page and then put it down again. I think a lot of people can get their own thing out of it.
My Riot: Agnostic Front, Grit Guts & Glory by Roger Miret
I love music and am a massive fan of New York Hardcore, so this book was a must for me. It’s about Roger Miret who is the lead singer of the band Agnostic Front, who was born in Cuba and moved to the United States with his family to escape the Castro regime. It’s a very real account of life struggle through themes like poverty and finding hope and unity through music.
Hail to the Chin by Bruce Campbell
I am really into films, especially cheesy horrors. Bruce Campbell is a legend in B movies and is in some of my all-time faves. It’s about the underdog making it in Hollywood and an insight into making a B movie – getting the financial backing, promoting it, etc. It’s also about friendship, with a now famous director/producer Sam Raimi. It’s about how they made The Evil Dead (the 1980’s one) which was expected to fail and gained a cult following. Plus it has some cool pictures thrown in throughout.
Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds by Gwenda Bond
So let’s talk about Stranger Things… I love this show! I started watching it to wind down after a hectic day at work and got hooked like lots of other people and eagerly await the new and final season next year. Anyway back to books… This book is a prequel to the show and is about the main character Eleven’s mum (Terry Ives). Its set at the end of the ‘60’s and is about Terry signing up to be a test subject for a very hush hush government experiment and the impact on her life as a result of this.
Misery by Stephen King
This book has been sat on my shelf for a number of years waiting to be read, so a desert island would mean no more excuses! I’ve seen the film but as with other Stephen King’s that have been adapted to film, I wanted to actually read it. It’s about a writer who is in a car crash and is found by someone who takes him home to look after him. This someone turns out to be his number one fan and is unhappy about his progression of her favourite character and shows him just how unhappy about this she is…
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