Blood Sweat and Tea: 10/27/06
I think Blood, Sweat and Tea is the first book where I've known all the previous reviewers. They are both active BookCrossers, and one of them has read the same copy of the book as I just finished as we are on the same ring.

Blood, Sweat and Tea started as a blog called Random Acts of Reality. The author of both is an EMT for the London Ambulance Service in East London. Having read some of the entries transcribed in the book I realized that I have read them in the blog, though at the time I was not a regular subscriber to the blog. I've enjoyed the book enough to subscribe to the blog so I will be a regular reader in the future.

Therein is the main problem with the book, it is a better blog than it is a book. Without the blog framework of date stamps and comments it is hard to see the natural flow of events from one day to the next. The book also removes most of the "off topic" entries that the blog has. These off topic posts provide a segue between the EMT posts so much of Reynold's personality doesn't come through except for when he's complaining about his job.

Here's my BookCrossing review:

While books and blogs both involve the written word, they are organized differently. Blogs like diaries are organized naturally by the dates on which entries are written. Books don't always work when organized chronologically and Blood, Sweat and Tea certainly would have benefited from some organization. The title itself could have provided inspiration for three separate categories that the blog entries could have been organized under: "Blood" or the actual emergencies, "Sweat" the annoying day to day grind of the job and "Tea" for the humorous or off topic entries. The book's jumble of topics gets in the way of reading the book at a normal pace.

Read the reviews at My Library, Paramedic UK, Scott's Bookshelf, Weird Ink, Interesting Pile.

books | nonfiction | tom reynolds | 2006