Favorite Books

[ToPa55]

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Not a big fan of reading if I don't have to, but The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings are two really great medical books by Oliver Sacks. They are presented as separate cases so it makes for good bathroom reading.

Just don't try to return them after you're done b/c they will be officially "flagged"

 

[Gavanshir]

malcolm x ay? LOL what interesting things did you learn in that book? he has a pretty wack autobiography...if you know what i mean? 😉 (hint: this isnt a racist reference)

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[StayingAlive23]

Can you elaborate on this?

I think i know what Gerrymandering is trying to say!
I'm a black dude and i obviously know about our "heroes"

Malcolm X was supposedly "homosexual"
Read this Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html

you can also find some hint of this in his autobiography...

 

[Oculus Sinistra]

yeah, that book has quite a "re-readability" to it. definitely one of my favorite crichton books...that and maybe Prey, which i loved.

Also very good. They were actually supposed to make a movie about that but I guess it's not going to happen now. A real shame.

 

[DrBorisCA]

What do you think about Brothers Karamazov? I liked it more than Crime and Punishement.

I just started Brothers, loved Crime and Punishment...

 

[drmota]

I think i know what Gerrymandering is trying to say!
I'm a black dude and i obviously know about our "heroes"

Malcolm X was supposedly "homosexual"
Read this Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html

you can also find some hint of this in his autobiography...

crazy. i didn't pick up on that at all when i read it. not that there's anything wrooooooong with that
-mota

 

[red dot]

They were busy doing a lot of begetting! Or maybe it was meant to be sci-fi?

tangent, but gdbaby, i saw that natalie dee comic yesterday on her site and it was soooo funny! it's exactly why i don't want to be a dentist.

oh, and whoever it was who said Where the Red Fern Grows, makes me wanna give you a hug. awww... i loved ann and dan.

 

[OctoDoc]

...whoever it was who said Where the Red Fern Grows, makes me wanna give you a hug. awww... i loved ann and dan.

That was me, and right back at ya. That book was the only one that had me blubbering. One of the few books that I finished feeling sad and empty that it was over. I read it maybe 25 years ago (yeah, I'm that old ), and I can vividly remember most of the book played out like a movie (my version, not the one that was actually made) in my head.

 

[Rogue Synapse]

Wow, a lot of posts here are sending me down memory lane, too. I've forgotten about a lot of these books. A friend gave me Crichton's "Prey" a couple years ago and I never read it. It's on my bookshelf now, lamely unread. I'm fixing that now.

 

[gdbaby]

tangent, but gdbaby, i saw that natalie dee comic yesterday on her site and it was soooo funny! it's exactly why i don't want to be a dentist.

oh, and whoever it was who said Where the Red Fern Grows, makes me wanna give you a hug. awww... i loved ann and dan.

That sight and her husband's
www.toothpastefordinner.com
make me laugh on a daily basis. I guess it can be considered reading for the purpose of this threas. Their website about their dogs is hysterical.

 

[EZMcFlo]

Lamb by Christopher Moore is probably the funniest book I've ever read and I could not put it down.

 

[dbhvt]

i think there was a movie based on the great gatsby, i'm pretty sure on it.

A very bad idea. Sure, the plot is moderately exciting, but the lyricism is what makes it one of the greatest novels of all time.

BOOKS

English language:
Gatsby
Sound and the Fury

I re-read these both regularly, though I don't always necessarily finish SF. I just like the Benji section an awful lot. Best opening to a novel ever:

"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."

Or something like that.

Russian language
Brothers is really the pinicle of Doestoevsky's work--it's where he's best at what he does, though I can see why some would like C&P better. C&P is more compact, more driven all the way through. Brothers rambles and rumbles. But I think the main reason people have difficulty getting through it, is that it is often destroyed in translation. Dostoevsky is always hard to translate, but Brothers is crazy. I love Oprah for promoting Pevear and Volkhonsky. They were visiting profs at Iowa for a bit. They do a good job with Tolstoy, but he's easy to get right. With Dostoevsky, there is no point to reading any other translation.

I'm also a fan of Anna. Beautiful. Simple. He just sets everything in motion with such detailed care and then lets it run it's course. Fabulous. The early train scenes... wow! I'm still holding to the Pevear and Volkhonsky translation, but you could go get the Norton critical. It's an updated Maude if I remember right, and pretty good.

Russian poetry is incredible, but don't bother reading it in translation.


Oh, and whoever said Alice Munro, very nice. I do like a short story every once in a while. To bring things around full circle. Short stories have a lot more in common with film in terms of scope, and the best adaptations I've seen are short stories to films.

 

[drmota]

they're also making a black version of the great gatsby (movie) called G. they either already made it or are making it. terrible
-mota

edit: its terrible not cuz its black but because its the gatsby story in the modern day edge and looks incredibly terrible

 

[gdbaby]

English language:
Gatsby
Sound and the Fury

MY soulmate. I love the Sound and the Fury. I also really enjoyed As I Lay Dying, which I thought would make a good play.

 

[rainyday]

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

 

[Hopeful_Doc]

The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Harry Potter Series (enjoyable for content not literary masterpiece)

My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir

Gesundheit! : Bringing Good Health to You, the Medical System, and Society through Physician Service, Complementary Therapies, Humor, and Joy by Patch Adams

 

[dbhvt]

MY soulmate. I love the Sound and the Fury. I also really enjoyed As I Lay Dying, which I thought would make a good play.

What is it with Faulkner and awesome openings? As I Lay Dying starts with that fantastic visual metaphor of Jewel displacing Darl's position in the family... the cotton house, the bare bones physicial descriptions outside the cotton house, fleshed out inside the cotton house.. just jaw dropping. This is why I love Faulkner. He does the same sort of thing with Benji in S&F: it's like an architect or engineer writing a schematic description of a physical object, only instead of a semiconductor or a sliding glass door, it's some transcendently beautiful metaphor.

 

[dbhvt]

edit: its terrible not cuz its black but because its the gatsby story in the modern day edge and looks incredibly terrible

Mota,

Don't bother. We know you are racist. We know this because there is nothing about Mos Def on your blog. If this is not because you are racist, then what other reasonable explanation would there be?

d

 

[OctoDoc]

I also really enjoyed As I Lay Dying, which I thought would make a good play.

The chapter that the dead mother narrated would certainly be interesting!

 

[funshine]

To everyone who liked the Great Gatsby, you should check out This Side of Paradise. It's not as smooth or compact as The Great Gatsby, but TSOP was his first book, and you can tell because it has a raw, wholehearted energy that is missing in his later works, IMO. He wrote it in his early twenties, and it's a great coming of age novel, all about the journey from youthful idealism to alienation, and finally, self-knowledge. Those themes never get old, do they? Anyway, I've always thought Fitzgerald was overshadowed by his more prolific comtemporaries--Hemingway!--but I'm happy to hear so many people liking Great Gatsby....his prose is truly exquisite and I don't think you'll find as charming a writer anywhere else 🙂.

I'll have to check out Faulker sometime. It's been years since I tried (and failed) The Sound and the Fury, so maybe it's time to give it another go.

 

[Brainsucker]

To everyone who liked the Great Gatsby, you should check out This Side of Paradise. It's not as smooth or compact as The Great Gatsby, but TSOP was his first book, and you can tell because it has a raw, wholehearted energy that is missing in his later works, IMO. He wrote it in his early twenties, and it's a great coming of age novel, all about the journey from youthful idealism to alienation, and finally, self-knowledge. Those themes never get old, do they? Anyway, I've always thought Fitzgerald was overshadowed by his more prolific comtemporaries--Hemingway!--but I'm happy to hear so many people liking Great Gatsby....his prose is truly exquisite and I don't think you'll find as charming a writer anywhere else 🙂.

I'll have to check out Faulker sometime. It's been years since I tried (and failed) The Sound and the Fury, so maybe it's time to give it another go.

Nah, read A Light in August. If you like that, then maybe try the Sound and the Fury. As I Lay Dying isn't really that great.

 

[karirunner]

My favorites:
(1) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(2) For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
(3) Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
(4) The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez Reverte
(5) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood- and pretty much everything by her
(6) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
(7) Any "hard-boiled" detective novel, especially by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, or Ross MacDonald. Mickey Spillane is pretty good too.
(8) Wicked by Gregory Maguire
(9) The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

 

[Pemberley]

So tough to choose...

Popular:
1) Death in Holy Orders, Children of Man, or anything else by PD James
2) anything by Patrick O'Brien (master & commander series)
3) any Harry Potter (esp 3&5)
4) any Robert Jordan (eye of the world = wheel of time series)
5) Ender's Game is tough to leave off the list... gotta come down on the side of David Brin or Neil Stevenson in the end for my sci-fi nominee.

Classic:
1) Pride & Prejudice, or anything else by Jane Austen
2) Doctor Zhivago by Pasternak
3) Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo & Juliet
4) Barchester Towers by Trollope

I'm one of the people who re-read the favorites over and over. It's nice sometimes to live for a few hours in a universe other than one's own.

-Pemberley

 

[drmota]

Mota,

Don't bother. We know you are racist. We know this because there is nothing about Mos Def on your blog. If this is not because you are racist, then what other reasonable explanation would there be?

d

god i hate blackies
-mota

 

[MDCali]

Actually, I'll agree with you. I've just always been into the technical military stuff. I enjoy reading his detailed descriptions of military hardware and procedures. I don't like anything he's done in the last decade. You have to admit that Hunt For Red October was a pretty fun book.

The detailed descriptions of military hardware and procedures are not that entertaining to me. However, Clancy novels are some of my favorites. Clancy is so NOT overrated!!

 

[Med Addict]

A Prayer for Owen Meany , John Irving

👍

 

[Brainsucker]

The detailed descriptions of military hardware and procedures are not that entertaining to me. However, Clancy novels are some of my favorites. Clancy is so NOT overrated!!

Clancy was better before he had massive success. Once he became successful, no editor could stop him from spouting endless technobabble. Just compare the size of the Hunt for Red October (easily his best) with later novels.

 

[Risa]

All-Time Favorites:

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb
Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The World According to Garp - John Irving
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Complications - Atul Gawande

Most Recent Read:

A Not Entirely Benign Procedure - Perri Klass

 

[DarkFark]

However, Clancy novels are some of my favorites. Clancy is so NOT overrated!!

Agree. Executive Orders and Debt of Honor in particular were amazing.


My favorite book of all time is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

 

[madrugada]

I love too many books.

But if you love soccer, worldliness, and theories on globalization, pregame the World Cup 2006 by reading How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer and get pumped.

 

[Apparition]

Keep them coming!

Here are the books I thought were definitely worth reading

1984 / Orwell - I failed a class because I couldn't put this book down to study for the final.

Animal Farm / Orwell
Brave New World / Huxley
We / Zamyatin
Middlesex / Eugenides
Kite Runner / Hosseini
C&P / Dostoevskiy
The Master and Margarita / Bulgakov
Doctor Zhivago / Pasternak
The Fountainhead / Rand
We the Living / Rand
Dry / Burroughs
House of God / Shem
The Spirit Catches you and you Fall Down / Fadiman
Complications / Gawande
First Do No Harm / Belkin

Books that I thought were a waste of time:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - had high expectations but how much detail can you get into?!

The Secret Life of Bees

Slaughterhouse-Five

Fahrenheit 451

 

[dbhvt]

Keep them coming!

Here are the books I thought were definitely worth reading

1984 / Orwell - I failed a class because I couldn't put this book down to study for the final.

Animal Farm / Orwell
Brave New World / Huxley
We / Zamyatin
Middlesex / Eugenides
Kite Runner / Hosseini
C&P / Dostoevskiy
The Master and Margarita / Bulgakov
Doctor Zhivago / Pasternak
The Fountainhead / Rand
We the Living / Rand
Dry / Burroughs
House of God / Shem
The Spirit Catches you and you Fall Down / Fadiman
Complications / Gawande
First Do No Harm / Belkin

Books that I thought were a waste of time:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - had high expectations but how much detail can you get into?!

The Secret Life of Bees

Slaughterhouse-Five

Fahrenheit 451

Vonnegut wrote one book 50 times.

 

[Hoberto]

These are good (mostly) medically related reads all compiled by SDNers!! The starred ones are just the ones I've read.

***A Map of the Child by Darshak Sangavi
A Not Entirely Benign Procedure by Perri Klass
And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto
Becoming a Doctor by Melvin Konner
***Betrayal of Trust: the Collapse of Global Public Health by Laurie Garrett
Blind Eye by James Stewart
***Complications by Atul Gawande
Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Delivering Doctor Amelia by Dan Shapiro
Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti
Emergency Doctor by Lewis Goldfrank
Five Patients by Michael Crichton
Gifted Hands by Benjamin Carson
Health and Healing by Andrew Weil, MD
Hot Lights, Cold Steel by Michael Collins
How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland
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
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
On Call by Emily Transue
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
***Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue by Danielle Ofri
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Surviving the Extremes by Kenneth Kamler
The Art of Medicine by Kevin J. Soden
The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett
The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston
The Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen in Rhyme by Zachary Cope
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 Hot Zone by Richard Preston
The House of God by Samuel Shem
***The Intern Blues by Robert Marion
The Language of Cells: A Doctor and His Patients by Spencer Nadler
The Lost Art of Healing by Dr. Bernard Lown
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks
***The Plague by Albert Camus
***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
Travels by Michael Crichton
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
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
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Dr. Christiane Northrup
***The Year of the Intern by Robin Cook

 

[Heather74]

Stiff,
State of Fear,
Cell

 

[Rogue Synapse]

I just went back and re-read the House of God. You'll appreciate it so much more after you're in your 3rd or 4th year of med school. Read it now to get an idea, and then go back and be shocked at how different your perception is. BTW, med school/residency has way less sex than the book would have you believe.

 

[Grey Leaf]

Catcher in the Rye -Salinger
In the Shadow of Man -Goodall
Sphere - Crichton

Figured I'd be honest and avoid the temptation of saying that my favorites are War and Peace, Moby Dick, and The Grapes of Wrath to look like a smarty pants. Goodness knows I've done that enough.

 

[BlueElmo]

1984 and Death of a Salesman. The Grapes of Wrath.

 

[Substance P]

1984 and Death of a Salesman. The Grapes of Wrath.

I agree with 1984... Awesome book


The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is also an excellent book.

 

[Substance P]

I just went back and re-read the House of God. You'll appreciate it so much more after you're in your 3rd or 4th year of med school. Read it now to get an idea, and then go back and be shocked at how different your perception is. BTW, med school/residency has way less sex than the book would have you believe.

You sure that wasn't just for you?

 

[musafirah]

i haven't read a book for fun since high school 🙁
except Qur'an which will always be my all time favorite book.. it never fails and i always learn

but my favorite novels:

Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo (have never read a book written like this before, stuck with me for life)
1984 and Animal Farm
brave new world ( because of its influence on me)
Slaughterhouse five (insane, but got me thinkin. as you might be able to tell by now im kinda anti-war)
Choke - chuck palahniuk
The Joy Luck Club
Most recently I like Oliver Sacks' stuff.

blasts from the wayy past!! Ender's Game series, Where the Red Fern grows.. anyone remember The Giver?? that was crazy. i still remember it even though i read it in 4th grade. oh, and the Indian in the Cupboard

I LOVED Roald Dahl books. like Matilda 🙂

for some reason i dont like ayn rand, and i hated catcher in the rye.

 

[the freest man]

1) lolita-nabokov
2) east of eden-steinbeck
3) a confederacy of dunces-toole
4) anything by greene

 

[teenmachinery1]

what are everyones favorite books (up to 3) excluding books such as orgo chem, and Gchem (i know its tempting)...

Sure, good question.

1) SPHERE by Michael Crichton (based on the sheer # of times I've read it)
2) NIGHT by Elie Wiesel (because of the struggle for humanity)
3) WATERSHIP DOWN (because it's adventurous, among other things)

I've read all the HARRY POTTER books and while I enjoy them, I don't think they are 'god's gift to literature' as some others would have you believe.

What are the flippin' chances that we both have SPHERE as our top 3?!! I've read it like a million times - I don't know why, but its' really enjoyable to read over and over again.

😉

 

[teenmachinery1]

1) Sphere (movie was horrible though). Best book plot ever: Aircraft discovered in the ocean, it's special though I won't give anything away, AND... well, I guess I can't say much else without giving it away so I'll stop :/

2) A Gay and Melancholy Sound

3) toss-up between letter to christian nation/citizens of an empire.

 

[266549]

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell--Tucker Max

 

[Jack Shephard]

These books "changed my life." Though I prefer short stories and screenplays, I consider these books my favorite. Some of the ones I list aren't my absolute favorite reads, but I like them most for what they've done for me after reading.

(in alphabetical order)


The Bible
Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
Ender's Game, Card
On the Road, Kerouac
The Trial, Kafka

 

[Substance P]

What are the flippin' chances that we both have SPHERE as our top 3?!! I've read it like a million times - I don't know why, but its' really enjoyable to read over and over again.

😉

I am with both of you. I liked sphere quite a bit. It's just a great read.


One I forgot is "Life of Pi" I really enjoyed that book.

Edit: Just remembered "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" by Oliver Sachs I loved this book.

 

[FlowRate]

I'm a Pre-Med, we don't read!!

1984
Brave New World
Catch 22
Harry Potter
Enderverse stuff

to name a few.

 

[Vicviper]

Right on for all the people who said Ender's Game, definetly my favorite book. The other books of the Ender series... eh, not as good, but still interesting reads. Anyways:

1. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card (I even got him to sign my book 😀 )
2. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand (the size of a cinderblock, but worth the read)
3. Night Watch - Terry Prachett ( Gotta love the Discworld)

 

[Gogogirl]

1. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand (I am liberal but I love this book..one of my favorites)
2. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (love murder, cant help it..)
3. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (classic...)
4. Sherlock Holmes series - Conan Doyle (...murder mysteries are very appealing to me..)

Of course others like the House of God and Complications are also on my list...=)

 

[JokerMD]

wow, im surprised at how well read many of you are!

my absolute favorite is Crime and Punishment. I must have read it half-a-dozen times!

I also like Rand (I know, the contrast is striking isn't it 😛) and Kafka.