The Complete Blood Sweat and Tea

I've been wanting to read this book for years. It was the basis for one of my favourite TV shows of all time (Channel 4's Sirens), and also one of my guilty pleasures (the bawdy US version) and I'd been meaning to pick the book up ever since I got addicted to the adaptations. I never quite got around to it, though. What can I say? I'm stingy.You can imagine, then, that when I was trawling Amazon for free e-books to make up the figures on my Goodreads 2015 Reading Challenge and saw that this particular book was among them, I was somewhat excited.In hindsight, I probably went into it with my expectations raised too high. Simply put, this book just doesn't match up to what I was hoping for.Firstly, it's based on a blog, which is fine. I knew that. However, I hadn't expected that it would literally just be copied and pasted from the blog, spelling and grammatical errors included. If I'm reading a blog, then I can deal with people using 'it's' where they mean 'its'. If I'm reading a book, however, then I expect some discerning editor to make the reading experience a little more fluid. It's just damn jarring to try and work around obvious mistakes.Secondly, the constant repetition of the phrase 'I'm not racist, but ...' and 'I'm not racist - I hate everyone equally!' made me particularly glad that the writers of the TV adaptations had clearly not based their protagonists on the author of this book. He sounds like the kind of guy you'd see at a party and would lead you to beg your friend to please, dear god, let you sit at the other end of the table.It really isn't all bad. There are some genuinely hilarious bits, as well as some actual human emotion, and I don't regret reading it. I'm just very glad that it was free.

This book had me laughing out loud on many busses. I applied to a Russel group medical school and they asked me 'Tell us a book you mentioned recently that shifted you perspective on the human condition' ... I talked about this book and focused on humanity's need to 'serve themselves first', before others. The interviews loved the answer because I was able to draw on the comedy that was paramount in this book, while showing thatt I engage in rider reading around my area of interest (medicine) and although I have aspirations to become a surgeon, I am curious about the perspective of other healthcare professionals.This isn't on those 'med-school applicants - recommended reading' lists, so not many young people would mention this book.But apart from aiding my ability to impress the professors/doctors, I thoroughly enjoyed the sarcastic humour of this book. The only reason I'm not giving this 5 starts is because I don't believe in creative perfection.And I know you want to know -- The medical shcool, offered me a place!

I thought this might be interesting, a blog from a 'real-life' ambulance man/paramedic/first responser, what ever you want to call them these days, but frankly I was just left rather bemused. I didn't expect all emergency shouts & blood, sweat and tears 24 hours a day, but...The author appears to have some anger issues and I have to say that his comments about nobody having a chance if they've had a heart attack before they get there are somewhat depressing.Other than that there are 'fascinating' insights into his life...."ate in the drivethrough, had a puncture, sat on the side of the road waiting for it to be fixed'

I should start off by pointing out that this book is basically a collection of blog posts from the blog 'Random Acts of Reality' which is no longer updated as the author no longer works for the ambulance service full time and has moved onto other things.As you can probably tell from the rating, this is one of those books I truly enjoyed. Ok, I read it over a couple of weeks during the breaks between lectures when I had nothing better to do but just because I didn't get so sucked in I couldn't put the book down it doesn't mean this book wasn't gripping. The blog post type format made it easy to find a place to stop as the stories weren't really related so you're not compelled to turn the page to find out about what happened to the person you were just reading about.This one can get a bit depressing at times, nobody thinks reading about sick children and dying patients is fun and games but there's enough humour (sometimes quite dark humour) to offset this. Oh, and reading about some of the reasons people call out the emergency services can make you lose a little bit of faith in humanity (I don't seem to be conveying how much I enjoyed the book very well here) but all those moments are worth it just to read the descriptions of traffic dodging and the weird panicky things people seem to do when they hear a siren.

I enjoyed it, found the writer a tad callous in places shrugging flippantly at a call for "yet another miscarriage" and saying " it is nature" , notice he was not a dad whos wife or gf had lost a baby and called an ambulance in a state of fear and distress. It happens a lot is what he means he is immune to another one.However, the book was written by someone who has become used to human tragedy, but you must become hard as nails to see dead and dying wounded and ill people every day , day in day out, I do agree about it being terrible when 999 is abused esp by drunks, this book was hard to put down once I began and the targets in London seem ridiculous as well for the size of the place.Well written , based on someones real experiences has some funny bits as well it isnt all bad news.