What are some good BOOKS to read for leisure?

Gifted Hands - Ben Carson
Complications - Atul Gwande
The House of God - Samuel Md Shem

and of course, The New York Times - Especially Tuesday's Science section

BTW, this thread looks like a repost...

yalla22 said:

What are some of everyones favorite fictional books? I know there have been some other threads on this but the advanced search function isnt working so i cant find them. I've read a lot of the classics (although certainly not all!) and am looking for some good reading. My favorites have been Jane austen, charlotte bronte, thomas hardy, hawthorne etc...

Any suggestions?

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Molecular Biology of the gene by Watson et al
Biology of the cell by Hardin et al
Vander's human physiology by raff et al
Physical chemistry by Atkins et al
The best Physics lectures by Richard feynman
Dancing Naked in the mine field by Kary mullis

Pm me if you need more.

easilydoctor said:

Gifted Hands - Ben Carson
Complications - Atul Gwande
The House of God - Samuel Md Shem

and of course, The New York Times - Especially Tuesday's Science section

BTW, this thread looks like a repost...

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Damn you too the words out of my mouth.

Another good one is "Stiff". Its about the secret lives of cadavers. Yeah sounds funny but you should go ahead and read it.

yalla22 said:

What are some of everyones favorite fictional books? I know there have been some other threads on this but the advanced search function isnt working so i cant find them. I've read a lot of the classics (although certainly not all!) and am looking for some good reading. My favorites have been Jane austen, charlotte bronte, thomas hardy, hawthorne etc...

Any suggestions?

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David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day

The only book to actually make me laugh out loud while reading it. He's very sarcastic and satirical. Definitely check him out.

Harrison's Internal Medicine

TheRealDrDorian said:

David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day

The only book to actually make me laugh out loud while reading it. He's very sarcastic and satirical. Definitely check him out.

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Hey is the hospital listed in your signature the same hospital that is in Pensacola, Florida??? That's the hospital's name in my friend's home town in Pensacola.

NM: I realized that was the dude from Scrubs.

At any rate that is the name of a real hospital in Florida in the very underserved area of Pensacola at the most western tip of the pan handle.

The Poisonwood Bible

Anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (personal favorite)

The Savage Nation - Michael Savage

1) Non-fiction and a great book:
Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile

the movie is coming out this Christmas starring:
Tom Hanks
Julia Roberts
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Super long book so I don't think the movie will do the book justice.

2)Fiction (great as an audio book, the only book that kept me up until 4 AM):

The secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kidd

i love reading the search bar

yalla22 said:

What are some of everyones favorite fictional books? I know there have been some other threads on this but the advanced search function isnt working so i cant find them. I've read a lot of the classics (although certainly not all!) and am looking for some good reading. My favorites have been Jane austen, charlotte bronte, thomas hardy, hawthorne etc...

Any suggestions?

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i'm a big fan of the authors you like...so i think we might have the same interests...

some of my favorites -

the counte of monte cristo - alexandre dumas
the picture of dorian gray - oscar wilde
bleak house - charles dickens (SO long, but if you can survive it, a GREAT story)

Mr. Belding said:

Unbearable Lightness of Being -Milan Kundera

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and i second this --

Books:
A Map of the Child by Darshak Sangavi
A Not Entirely Benign Procedure by Perri Klass
A Piece of My Mind by Roxanne K. Young
After Your Third Martini by Mark Leyner
And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts
Another Day in the Frontal Lobe by Katrina Firlik, M.D.
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
Baby Doctor by Perri Klass.
Becoming a Doctor by Melvin Konner
Betrayal of Trust: the Collapse of Global Public Health by Laurie Garrett
Blind Eye by James Stewart
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories By Vincent Lam, M.D (Giller Prize)
Body of Knowledge: One Semester of Gross Anatomy, the Gateway to Becoming a Doctor by Steven Giegerich
Brute by Richard Selzer
Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
Complications by Atul Gawande
Darkness Visible by William Styron
Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Delivering Doctor Amelia by Dan Shapiro
Doctors by Erich Segal
Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti
Emergency Doctor by Lewis Goldfrank
Fatal Cure by Robin Cook
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Dr. Paul Brand
First Do No Harm by Lisa Belkin
Five Patients by Michael Crichton
Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure by Charles Bosk
Gifted Hands by Benjamin Carson
Grandfather's Blessings and Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen
Health and Healing by Andrew Weil, MD
Hot Lights, Cold Steel by Michael Collins
How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland
House of God by Samuel Shem
Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag
Incidental Findings by Danielle Ofri
Internal Bleeding by Robert M. Wachter and Kaveh Shojania
Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives by Pamela Grim, MD
Kill as Few Patients as Possible by Oscar London
King of Hearts by G. Wayne Miller
Kitchen Table Wisdom by Dr. Rachel Remen
Letters to a Young Doctor by Richard Selzer
Mama Might be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Healthcare in Urban America
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Mount Misery by Samuel Shem
Narrative Medicine by Rita Charon
A Not Entirely Benign Procedure by Perri Klass
On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf
On Call by Emily Transue
On Becoming a Doctor: Reflections of Women in Medicine
On Doctoring edited by Richard Reynolds, MD, and John Stone, MD
Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer
Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran
Scalpel and the Silver Bear by Lori Arviso Alvord
Second Opinions by Jerome Groopman
Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue by Danielle Ofri
Spirit Catches You by Fadiman
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Surviving the Extremes by Kenneth Kamler
The Anatomy of Hope by Jerome Groopman
The Art of Medicine by Kevin J. Soden
he Butterfly and the Diving Bell by Jean-Dominique Bauby
The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde
The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett
The Citadel by A.J. Cronin
The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston
The Desire to Heal by Raphael Campo
The Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen in Rhyme by Zachary Cope
The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams
The Dressing Station by Jonathan Kaplan
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity by Roy Porter
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
The Intern Blues by Robert Marion
The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks
The Language of Medicine by Davi-Ellen Chabner
The Language of Cells: A Doctor and His Patients by Spencer Nadler
The Lost Art of Healing by Dr. Bernard Lown
The Making of a Surgeon by William A Nolen
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks
The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine by Eric J. Cassel
The Need for a New Medical Model by George L. Engel
The Physician and Shaman by Noah Gordon
The Pact by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The Scalpel and the Silver Bear by Lori Alvord, MD
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
The Strange Case of the Walking Cadaver by Nancy Butcher
The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Medical Specialty by Brian Freeman, MD
The Wisdom of the Body (also titled How We Live) by Sherwin B. Nuland
This Ain't ER by C. Patrick Murrah
Time to Heal by Kenneth Ludmerer
Toxin by Robin Cook
Travels by Michael Crichton
Vector by Robin Cook
Virus X by Frank Ryan
Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Ruhlman
Walking Out on the Boys by Francis Conley
War Hospital by Sherri Fink
What I Learned in Medical School by Kevin Takakuwa
What Patients Taught Me by Audrey Young
What Your Doctor Really Thinks: Diagnosing the Doctor-Patient Relationship by Ian Blumer
When the Air Hits Your Brain by Frank Vertosick
Where is the Mango Princess by Cathy Crimmins
White Coat: Becoming a Doctor at Harvard Medical School by Ellen Rothman, M.D.
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Dr. Christiane Northrup
Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor
Year of the Intern by Robin Cook

Also, A Fighter's Heart by Samuel Shem

TheRealDrDorian said:

David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day

The only book to actually make me laugh out loud while reading it. He's very sarcastic and satirical. Definitely check him out.

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i'm reading that now and loving it! not sure if a jane austin fan would appreciate it though . try secret history by donna tartt. light reading, some drama, and tough to put down!

If you want to go for modern fiction these are some of my favorites from the past year (I like the authors you mentioned so we probably have similar tastes)


The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Kakfa on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
My Sister's keeper - Jodi Picoult
The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
The Alienist - Caleb Carr

(I know these all sound the same...thats just a weird coincidence)

if you, for some insane, unheard of reason, feel like NOT reading medically-related fiction, then I suggest:

The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini (They're making a movie about it right now)
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

jennifermov said:

i'm a big fan of the authors you like...so i think we might have the same interests...

some of my favorites -

the counte of monte cristo - alexandre dumas
the picture of dorian gray - oscar wilde
bleak house - charles dickens (SO long, but if you can survive it, a GREAT story)




and i second this --

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i adore _the counte of monte cristo_!
also, i agree with mr. belding's recommendation of _midnight's children_.

personal favorites:

_jane eyre_
_the time of our singing_ (richard powers)
_the dispossessed_ (ursula le guin)
_a tree grows in brooklyn_ (betty smith)
_angle of repose_ (wallace stegner)
_his dark materials_ (trilogy, by philip pullman)
_the blind assassin_ (margaret atwood)
_atonement_ (ian mcewan)

um, and neil gaiman's _neverwhere_. i'm a geek.

TheRealDrDorian said:

David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day

The only book to actually make me laugh out loud while reading it. He's very sarcastic and satirical. Definitely check him out.

Click to expand...

i once lied straight to david sedaris' face. unintentionally, about living in chicago (i'd spent the whole time in the book-signing queue talking with a couple from chicago). when i got up to the front of the line, he asked me where i'd driven from, i said chicago (i live in ann arbor), and he started pondering aloud whether it would be prudent of him to ask for a ride back to his old city . . .

Dostoyevsky "Crime and Punishment" , L.Tolstoy "War and Peace", Gogol "Dead Souls", Nabokov "Laughter in the Dark" and "Lolita" Petrarch "Canzoniere", Boccaccio "Decameron", Dumas "Three Musketeers", Conan-Doyle, HG Wells, J.Verne

fun read

I don't know about everyone else but I hate reading fiction no matter how entertaining it is. I loved Count of Montecristo before premed but when I tried to reread it, I'm really hated it because it maked me feel like I was losing touch of reality. Sounds weird I know.
I enjoy the New York Times the most and Discover magazine for a touch of Fictional stimulation.

Best book I read in a long time is The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. You might want to read Dante's Inferno ahead of time if that interests you at all, but it's definitely not necessary.

Nonfiction---Freakonomics--But it is a great book that explains the oddities that occur in the nation.

The Phantom Tollbooth - by Norman Juster. It's so good it could serve as a life guide in the absence of religion.

quick, summer beach reads:

1. "the red tent" by anita diamont (by far, my favorite book of all time)
2. "the last time they met" by anita shreve
3. "my sister's keeper" by jodi picoult

i can't imagine myself reading some of the other books on this thread at the beach, but i'm not sure what you're really looking for...

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - Its both politically and economically relevant AND a quick juicy read. Rare and fabulous.

Critical Mass said:

That's just wrong.

I like Orson Scott Card novels.

You should ask the lounge crowd.

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Hopping on the Ender train is often a dangerous trip.

Percy Walker has a lot of good stuff. It's philosophy made less painful. I really enjoyed The Moviegoer, but all of his books are pretty good.

Brave New World-- Aldous Huxley
The Dharma Bums-- Jack Keroauc
Gone With the Wind-- Margaret Mitchell
1984-- Orwell
Fast Food Nation (non-fiction, but still GREAT... you'll never eat fast food again!)-- Eric Schlosser
The Grapes of Wrath-- Steinbeck
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Hell's Angels; The Curse of Lono-- Hunter S. Thompson
(In fact.... anything by Hunter S. Thompson is AMAZING. )
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test-- Tom Wolfe

nene1985 said:

Brave New World is a great read, makes me want to go find some soma ( those who have read the book know what this is.) and give it to people.

Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Beloved ( my fave for all time) by Toni Morrison
Let's face it, I like anything by Morrison.

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I love Toni Morrison, too. Let's face it, she's awesome.

Want a really, really long read? Try Journey to the West - I wrote my Religious Studies Thesis paper on it

Want something shorter? Anything by Eudora Welty or Flannery O'Connor

The Meq by Steve Cash
Timedancers: Book II of The Meq by Steve cash.
Never have your dog Stuffed by Alan Alda
Blue Blood by Edward Conlon
+1 for Complications, by Gawande
Orson Scot Card is always a good choice

Robert Heinlein novels are fun, too.

I'm hoping to tackle the graphic novels of "V for Vendetta" and "The Avengers" this summer out on the river. (graphic novel= adult comic book?)

nene1985 said:

Brave New World is a great read, makes me want to go find some soma ( those who have read the book know what this is.) and give it to people.

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Yeah... the whole time I read it, I was thinking the same thing!! Apparently, there's a real soma plant, which has halluciongenic properties much like those described in the book... I'd like to get a hold of some of that and give it to some people at my school...

In fact... I could use a "soma holiday" right about now!!!

Non-fiction: Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene

Well, as noted above, there is already a similar thread in the Lounge, but what the heck, I need to get my post total to 10,000...

Thoroughly enjoyed Stiff: The Secret Life of Cadavers. Very interesting.

Just purchased her follow-up: Spook (about the afterlife, if any)

Totally overrated, IMHO: Running with Scissors. Did they pay his screwed up family to write the quotes about its "hilarity" on the jacket? I could have stared into space in O'Hare and enjoyed myself more than by reading this book.

"Me Talk Pretty One Day" - eh, not as good as I thought it would be, but decent.

Falling Leaves, fascinating cross cultural study as well as a bit of history and general family dysfunction.

Cannot get through Reading Lolita in Tehran. Too "literary" for me...don't really want to know about the symbolism of the works, really just want to read about the political issues behind the Taliban and women's education.

Just arrived: Medical Apartheid and Frommer's Arizona 2007 (since I might be moving there).

Don't care much for fiction as you can tell.

The Kite Runner is my favorite book

DrVanNostran said:

The Kite Runner is my favorite book

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kite runner and poisonwood bible..top choices!

Vitapita said:

kite runner and poisonwood bible..top choices!

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i am literelly holding Poisonwood bible in my hands right now...so weird..

Anastasis said:

Want a really, really long read? Try Journey to the West - I wrote my Religious Studies Thesis paper on it

Want something shorter? Anything by Eudora Welty or Flannery O'Connor

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Are you talking about the Chinese classic? I think I read the comic book version of it when I was a kid. Agree on Flannery O'Connor, the ending of Everything That Rises Must Converge still hits me like a ton of bricks.

A few favorites (all fiction):

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Marquez
"Cosmicomics", by Italo Calvino
"The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman (and the two sequels)
"The Forsyte Saga" by John Galsworthy
"Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri -- short stories
"You're an Animal, Vaskovitz!" by Alessandro Boffa -- the most hilarious book I ever read.

Any of the above will entertain and offer food for thought.

agree about Poisonwood Bible, but I'd read The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay first because it is surperb. Also anything by James Baldwin, I'm partial to Giovanni's Room and Go Tell it on the Mountain