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John Harris' excellent book Maybe I'm Amazed has been one of my non-fiction top reads this year. It was a huge pleasure to welcome James Booth to the podcast to discuss it, and share some of our experiences.  We are both GPs, we are both parents of autistic young people and we both found John's book relatable, funny, warm, moving and necessary.

If you want to know more about the book, here's what the publisher's say:

"In this extraordinary memoir, a father tells the story of how music has opened up the world to his son, one song at a time. Obsessed with music since he was a child, John Harris had no idea that he was in fact preparing himself for the greatest challenge of his life. But so it transpired. When his son James was born, and three years later diagnosed with autism, music became a source of precious connection and endless wonder for both of them.

Maybe I'm Amazed describes how the music of The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Funkadelic, The Velvet Underground, Amy Winehouse and many more were soon woven into the fabric of James's life, becoming an essential part of who he is. It takes us through the struggles of raising an autistic child in a prejudiced world, and uncovers a hidden history of neurodivergence and creativity that casts new light on why notes, chords and lyrics speak so powerfully to the human mind.

Anyone who has fallen in love with a band or heard their life reflected back to them by a song will recognise themselves in the story of this father and his son. And in considering the intense and transcendent way James absorbs and connects with music, it has lessons in listening and living for us all."

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A warm welcome today to Dr. Ahmed Handy, who is here to talk about his memoir, Quacks. We've recorded today my favourite bookshop, which is Scarthin Books in Cromford, near Matlock. If the sound is a little bit different to how you might expect the podcast to sound, I hope you'll bear with us. There were a few people in the background. There were loads of people looking at books, thinking about books, and drinking cups of tea and eating cake in this absolute gem of a place.

It felt like far too good an opportunity to miss to be talking about the book in the most wonderful independent bookstore I can think about, so please enjoy and bear with the sounds of teaspoons and teacups!

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Medication, Mental Illness and Murder. What Really Killed the Crespi Twins? sounds like the title of a true crime book or a thriller. I suppose you could call this a true crime. This is an incredibly good book, which has really, really challenged me. I'm delighted to be welcoming Ed Jones, the author to the podcast today.


It's quite a hard read in places. It's a story about father who was significantly unwell, who was struggling with side effects from medication and who took the lives of his two children and pays the price of consecutive life sentences in US s jail. Not in any way cheerful reading. But I think a really important book. And I've thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Ed today about how we perceive illness, about the role of pharmaceutical companies in marketing drugs in particular ways, about spin and propaganda and really the importance of listening to people, particularly when they perceive that they or somebody else might be at risk.

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It's a huge pleasure today to welcome Martin Brunet to Bedside Reading. We are talking about his fabulous book, Your Worry Makes Sense. You may have discovered Martin on Instagram where he's a bit of a mental health sensation. He is such a wonderful communicator and an incredible translator of knowledge. And this comes across absolutely brilliantly in this fantastic book, which has already been recommended to a huge number of my patients and my colleagues with very good effect.

Follow Martin in instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doc_martin_gp/

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Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshanathan, which won the Women's Prize last year, was my absolute top read of 2024. It's been a real joy to revisit it today with Kathleen Weneden to think about the wonders of the storytelling and the importance of hearing stories from the perspective of people who often do not have their own narratives captured,

Some of the themes in Brotherless Night, have really, really stayed with me. This is an absolutely phenomenal novel. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's been a real privilege to talk to Kathleen about it and to think about things that are all relevant to all of us from this novel.

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 I'm delighted to welcome Jo Rose to the podcast to talk about The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clark. This is an incredibly moving book which I was delighted to see won the 2025 Women's Prize for non-fiction. It interweaves the stories of two children, Kiera and who has died after a road traffic accident, and Max, who has cardiomyopathy, severe heart failure, and is awaiting a heart transplant.


This is the story of how Kiera's heart becomes Max's heart, along with an incredible supporting cast of clinicians and of families, and with segues out into the history of transplant, the origins of ATLS, and It is astonishingly moving and beautiful book, which I absolutely adored. It was such a great joy to talk to Jo about it and revisit it and think again of the beautiful storytelling and the importance of this type of story.

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I've got two guests with me today, Joanna Bircher and Ben Allen, two GPs who are talking about a book they've both been involved in. Joanna is one of the co-editors of a collection of stories from leaders in Primary Care. The stories featured are not just from GPs, there's a really, really wide range of primary care professionals talking about leadership and what leadership means for them in a really practical sense of how they have done the things that they've done. 

It was a really, really fabulous conversation to have with the two of them, thinking about what leadership is, why it's so important to remember that you can't be what you can't see, and why our perception of leadership actually might be holding us back from being the leader that we could be.

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A warm welcome back to the podcast today to novelist Rebecca Wait. We are today talking about her fabulous novel Havoc, which was published in July 2025. We recorded it just before it was released into the world. As this episode  goes out it's been flying off the shelves for a few weeks now. It is an excellent, excellent book.


If you are looking for something to pack and take on holiday with you, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is the absolutely compelling and completely bonkers story of Ida, a teenager from the north of Scotland who feels she needs to get away from her life and writes to a variety of girls' boarding schools in England
desperate to go somewhere else and to escape. Out of the frying pan into the fire, she ends up at an incredibly eccentric, failing, small girls boarding school in the south of England, where all sorts of things start to happen.

It is such a brilliantly written novel. I absolutely loved it. And I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to Rebecca today about it.

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Today I am delighted to be talking to Heidi Edmondson, consultant in emergency medicine from London. We are talking about her second book, her memoir Bellyfull.

This is the story of Heidi's own journey through a very serious and rare illness and her strategies for denial, for adaptation, and for keeping on, keeping on, really beyond the point at which most of us would perhaps have succumbed to the overwhelming fatigue and general malaise that she was suffering from.

She explores this in relation to the way that the and NHS and emergency medicine in particular keeps on keeping on working in a broken and failing system, but somehow has that ability to just get up and get on with things.

Bellyfull is an absolutely brilliant book. There is so much warmth, humanity, kindness and optimism within there. It's a really, really good read. And I have loved talking to Heidi about it today.

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Have you ever suffered from imposter syndrome? I think most healthcare professionals have done at some point during their lives. Today's book is one which seeks to address many of the factors that influence that. Though interestingly, the writer Tara Mohr doesn't ever use the phrase "imposter syndrome".

I'm here today with Sam Powell to talk about Playing Big by Tara Mohr. This is a really accessible leadership book, thinking about why women often "play small",
why they don't necessarily push themselves forward, why they let their inner critic sabotage the amazing ideas that they've got and things that they want to do.

It is book filled with lots and lots of practical wisdom, which I have thoroughly enjoyed talking about.