The author is known for his love of traveling, & his work as an ER physician in NYC during the Covid pandemic....& his social media accounts on which he documented both. This is a bit of a sampling of both. The accounts/musings of his travel were okay/fine....but I found the diary-like accounts of his shifts/work in the Emergency Dept's of various NYC hospitals to be the star of this book. It's interesting to read & remember those times/dates that we all lived & worked through in our recent past. His inside/behind the scenes account of the scenes we saw on the tv news during that time....very good/descriptive/brings back memories. The book is put together well, & a quick read. There's a lot to relate to here for everyone, since we all just recently lived through this, but probably especially of interest to those in the health care field, & also travel buffs?
I received an e-ARC of this book from publisher Harper Horizon via NetGalley, for review purposes. These are my opinions & this is my own fair & honest review.

I followed Calvin Sun’s Instagram account very closely during the pandemic. He is an ER doctor based in New York City and so during the beginning of the pandemic, he was not only on the front lines, but weeks ahead of many other cities. He shared many of his daily experiences on his Instagram account @monsoondiaries and he did so with candour, insight and even practical advice. He spent a lot of time trying to educate the general public and I know I was really grateful. This book captures his experiences over that period of time but with even greater depth and reflection.

The Monsoon Diaries by Dr. Calvin Sun, was his gripping and emotional journey during the peak of COVID in 2022. in New York City. I was already in awe of all the medical staff went through during this time just from what I have heard in the media but this memoir really brought it home. My heart broke for him and the staff who put their lives at risk every day, suffered emotional and psychological heartbreak and were asked to do the impossible.
It was hard to read at times as it felt partly like reliving the fear but it's so important for people NOT to forget 2022 and those who sacrificed everything for everyday people. Beautiful writing and I highly recommend it. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I have had the opportunity to hear the story of how Monsoon Diaries came to be from Dr Calvin Sun pre-pandemic (at an in person event in Washington, DC!). The monsooning, also known as traveling, stories are captivating and now we get to read a book about the lessons learned from those journeys. For Dr Sun, his life experiences equipped him to ‘show up’ despite the fear and challenges that came in the early days of the 2020 pandemic. Although this memoir is told in the context of Covid-19’s early days, this book takes you on a journey that is filled with relatable life altering moments and lessons that can be learned from them — even for non-medical professionals (like myself). It was oddly therapeutic to read this book; I highly recommend it.

I followed Dr Calvin Sun on Instagram Stories during the covid pandemic and greatly appreciated his sharing of this story and experience, especially in the frontlines in New York. I also greatly appreciated him sharing other healthcare professionals perspectives from all around the world, to hear and see how the world is doing as we only get one side of the story from mainstream news, whether it be conservative or liberal.

In terms of this memoir, if I just see it as a collection of his thoughts in his diary/journal/blog that he's putting out into the world, then it's great. But otherwise, it was a bit hard to follow as I felt his thoughts were everywhere. No real cohesiveness throughout the book. It was a bit stream-of-consciousness and a bit too much at some times. But nonetheless, I really did appreciate his perspective and his sacrifice.

The Monsoon Diaries is a memoir written by Dr. Calvin Sun, one of the front line workers of the COVID 19 pandemic in one, if not the biggest, hot spots in the United States of New York City. Full transparency, I was an early follower of Dr. Sun because I am an emergency room nurse in the Midwest. He became a voice for the voiceless during the pandemic. Dr. Sun describes so many of the feelings that healthcare workers experienced during the beginning stages of the pandemic in such a way that is as fast paced as the emergency rooms he was working in, but with such tragic understanding of the affect the pandemic has on most healthcare professionals during this extremely trying time. It was interesting to hear his backstory, how "monsooning" or traveling to fulfill something in him he felt he was missing enabled him to see the beauty even in a terrible situation of being an emergency room doctor during the worse pandemic of our lifetime. I felt that he narrated my feelings perfectly, and encourage others to understand how the uncertain times of 2020 and beyond have and will continue to have lasting affects on healthcare professionals in the future. Overall, very interesting read, felt like I was right there with him coding these COVID patients, and look forward to sharing this book with my friends and family.
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. All the opinions above are my own.

The Monsoon Diaries is a mixture of reflection and accounting of actual events in New York City at the height (I hope....) of the pandemic as it played out there. As I understand it, Dr. Sun kept a blog and this book came about due to that. I don't follow his blog, but I may do it now as I enjoyed his writing which in some places is very straight forward and in others, is quite literary. My primary interest was in his experiences in the ER and his account helped me understand more of what our medical personnel experienced. It's a bit choppy as it goes back and forth between his past and present, but that shouldn't stop any reader from engaging with the content.

I have been following Dr. Sun on instagram since the coronavirus outbreak in March 2020. I found him to be a reasonable voice among all the chaos and potential disinformation. I also loved to go along with him virtually on his travels. This book was especially interesting because he had the most inside look at the covid outbreak and I liked his detailed memories on this time that we'll always look back on and remember what it felt like.

It's strange to read a memoir of a historic event that seems only moments ago, in a summer where the news reports new surges and one of your dearest friends, who dodged it this whole time, just becomes positive (but now, how that means something different for people who have been vaccinated and boosted and how much safer that can be--my grandmother and her husband also tested positive a month or so ago, and how I would have anticipated the worst news if it were in the world of this book). I'm not sure this is the time I would have chosen this book (instead, it came available on NetGalley).

So when DOES someone read a book about people who worked at the center of something we are experiencing residual trauma on? I am a public school teacher, so I will see the disparities for years to come. Those who had access to support during the pandemic versus those who didn't. The kids who built up resilience, who found ways to keep moving forward, and those whose way forward was into darker places.

Reading about the daily life of an ER doctor in NYC just reminded me of everything outside of that bubble--me. My family. That awful school-at-home. The overload of students I held that year--eight classes. Calling my vice principal from the porch about the dozen honors students in danger of failing because of turning nothing in. Standing in the sunshine and watching the numbers tick up every day in the news.

But I think reading this is important. From what I could glean, Sun became famous from a blog he kept of his substantial travels across the globe, a practice I find fascinating. But those chapters were the least compelling of the book. Instead, for me, it was the in-the-thick-of-it hospital stories, the anecdotes about colleagues and the ways the world of hospitals in NYC changed that I was most interested in.

Smaller things bothered me--the cliches, calling fear "my old friend" too many times. The repetition didn't work for me. It felt forced, and I wanted these "diaries" (resurrected pieces? created after the fact?) to feel just a touch more literary, less like reading a blog.

It's a good addition to the canon of medical memoir. It's not astonishing, but it's good. I'm glad to have stumbled upon it.