Book Recommendations before starting school

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SuperDaveBobEinstein

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I just finished reading When Breath Becomes Air and highly recommend it to anyone who knows how to read. I want to read as much as I can before starting medical school in August (not related to any med school course material). Does anyone have any reading-list recommendations tangentially related to healthcare that I might want to read? Preferably novels.

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For a previous (ancient) thread on books some of us have enjoyed, see: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=293681

post 197 on page 4 of that thread has a good overall list.

Also check out:

The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek (short stories)

The Death of Vishnu: A Novel by Manil Suri

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (short stories)

Bel Canto: A Novel by Ann Patchett

I've not yet read The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead but I've heard good things about it.
 
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I've been reading as much as possible too before school starts. Great reads: the gene and the emperor of all maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and mountains beyond mountains by Paul Farmer. I don't usually read novels but I just finished reading house of god (pretty entertaining) and currently reading catch 22 (not specifically medicine-oriented though).
 
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The Gene. I haven't read it yet but I'm planning on picking it up this week. Here's NPR's synopsis:

"Siddhartha Mukherjee is a first-rate science writer, who makes even the trickiest bits of biology easy to understand. But The Gene, his disarming study of what's known and believed about inheritance, is really a story about people — about the way blind luck, missed opportunities and misguided ambition can win or lose the day in scientific research and life. "Science is an endurance sport," Mukherjee writes. Take, for example, Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, who planted his famous peas only after twice failing his exams to teach high school science. There is much humor and warmth in Mukherjee's book, but he also chronicles the devastating history of eugenics. For anyone eager to learn more about the real promise and limits of "personalized medicine," to understand where we've been and where we're headed, The Gene is an insightful guide."

I'll let you know how it is!
 
An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted and the Miracle Drug: Cocaine

By Markel
 
Not related to medicine, but I just finished The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek and it was excellent.
 
Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem
Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink
 
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