I've read this before, around 10 years ago, but couldn't remember all that much about it, except for the fact that I really loved it, and thought the narrator and I were pretty much the same person. (except that he had had a brain thing, and I hadn't. Then.) So, time to reread it, even though I have mixed feelings about rereading books I've loved, in case I'm disappointed that I don't love it as much the second time.

White Sands is a collection of mostly travel pieces by Geoff Dyer; they have been published in different forms in magazines such as Harpers, Granta, and The New Yorker. Some concern visits to the great Land Art works in the US - he visits Lightning Field and Spiral Jetty, and also Tahiti, Beijing and Svalbard among others. These essays do reveal more of Geoff Dyer himself than others I've read, he seems more vulnerable and human than usual, they are a little more personal, about him as well as what he's seeing or where he is. The title piece, White Sands, is particularly dramatic.

This is essentially a showcase of a lifetime of Annie Dillard's work - it's an anthology of previously published essays, selected from her 8 non-fiction books, arranged in chronological order. She's mostly known for a particular kind of observational writing, she is almost uniquely able to illuminate ordinary moments, or ordinary objects, and transform them through precise and meditative language into something extraordinary.
She's especially strong on observations of the natural world, eclipses, moths and birds, but also herself, her emotions and experiences.

David Galler is an intensive care specialist at Middlemore Hospital. This is a memoir about his experiences as a medical specialist and the incidents that have influenced his life and thinking. It opens with the death of his father, and closes with the death of his mother, both Polish Jewish migrants to New Zealand in the 1940s. In between these two moving stories, he describes a variety of cases he has worked on, and muses on the politics of health care, euthanasia, organ transplants and other difficult issues.

Invisible Cities is acclaimed as a 20th Century classic from an author who died in 1985, having written a significant number of major works.

Sarah's husband is undergoing medical treatment in Auckland, they live in Hamilton, so are staying in a central city apartment temporarily. Sarah is walking in the Symonds Street cemetery and meets Hartley. They meet for coffee and soon begin an affair, which takes Sarah by surprise; middle-age is not meant to lend itself to passion and excitement, especially when one's husband's life is at risk. The conduct of the affair, the emotions involved from all parties, and the city of Auckland are all very finely observed with nuance and subtlety.