interesting college-level books?

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Doesn't have to be well known, but do you guys have any recommendations for an interesting college-level book?

I need something to talk about when an interviewer asks me "Have you read anything good lately?"

Truthfully, the last 4 books I've read were pertaining to healthcare. So...
 
A thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
 
I just finished How Doctors Think. It was pretty interesting, even though I don't necessarliy agree with all of it. It talks about why doctors make mistakes and different problems with healthcare
 
The Sunflower - Simon Wiesenthal
Its Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life - Lance Armstrong
The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
Good to Great - Jim Collins
The Innovators Solution - Christensen Raynor
A Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
 
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Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers - Robert M. Sapolsky
 
Yeah, no, rowlings is not my problem. I've never read any of the HP books. I've just um... never read anything aside from mandatory reading in HS to get my A's and 5's on APs.
 
Pushing To The Front - Orison Swett Marden

Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom (great end of life book)

Oh, The Places You'll Go! - Dr. Seuss (Okay, not great for med school interviews but a must read for all)
 
We Were Soldiers Once and Young
Coming of Age in Mississippi
 
Jacked from a forum I frequent:

The Illiad

The Odyssey

Ulysses (Anything by Joyce)

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Complete Works of Shakespeare

The Grapes of Wrath

The Great Gatsby

Animal Farm

1984

Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas

Brave New World

Angela's Ashes

The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

The Deptford Trilogy

The Bible

Frankenstein

Catch 22

Catcher in the Rye

Two Solitudes

Paradise Lost

The Death of Ivan Illytch.

Dracula

LOTR (Anything by Tolkien)

Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy (Anything by Douglas Adams)

The Republic

The Allegory of the Cave

Jane Eyre

The Things They Carried

Beloved

Crime and Punishment

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The Sun Also Rises

Fahrenheit 451

Fight Club

Gods Debris

Tao of Jeet Kune Do

H4rrY p0tt3R!!! OMG!! l0lz0rz!11!

Heart of Darkness

The Poisonwood Bible

All Quiet on the Western Front

Anything by Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Flowers for Algernon

The Color Purple

Qu'ran

Torah

Anything by William Faulkner

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Leaves of Grass

Anything by Robert Frost

Anything by Emily Dickinson

Things Fall Apart

On the Road

Slaughterhouse-Five

Anything by Nietzsche

Go Tell it on the Mountain

Point Counterpoint

Jennifer Government

Of Human Bondage

The Moral Animal

Non-Zero: The Sum of Human Logic

The Disposessed

The Razor's Edge

Temporary Autonomous Zone

Power of One

A Christmas Carol

Anything by Einstein

The Chronicles of Narnia

Noteable Historical Trials (Vol. 1-4)

No Man is an Island: A Selection of Prose of John Donne

Anything by Voltaire

Anything by Thoreau

The New York Public Library Science Desk Reference

Culloden

Glencoe

Aeneid

Moby Dick

Anything by Will Ferguson (If you're Canadian)

Business Communication: Process & Product

Neuromancer

Anything by Poe

The Egyptian

Anything by Orwell

The Farseer Saga (Anything by Robin Hobb AKA Megan Lindholm)

The Wheel of Time

Anything by T.H. White

A Song of Fire and Ice

The Sword of Truth

Anything by Tad Williams

Anything by David Eddings

Anything by Frank Herbert (Dune Series in Particular)

Anything by Raymond Feist (Riftwar Saga)

The Darksword Trilogy

The Death Gate Cycle

Sword of Shannara

Rose of the Prophet

Anything by Michael Moorcock

Incarnations of Immortality Series

Anything by Steven Brust

Tales from the Earthsea

Tales of the Otori

The Glass Bead Game

The Prince

The Art of War

Anything by Jung

Anything by Marx

Metamorphosis

Gulliver's Travels

The Island of Doctor Moreau

Oedipus Trilogy (Sophocles)

Gulliver's Travels

Dante's The Divine Comedy (especially Inferno)

Origin of Species

Anything by Dickens

Anything by Jules Verne

Don Quixote

This Side of Paradise

The Wealth of Nations

The Time Machine

The Three Musketeers

Faust

The Dumas Club

Long Walk to Freedom

Anything by Hunter S. Thompson

In the Skin of a Lion

Coming up for Air

The Motorcycle Diaries

The Histories (Herodutus)

Song of Solomon

Shibumi

Breakfast of Champions

Despair (Nabokov)

Something Happened

Ivanhoe

Redwall

The Dharma Bums

The Divine Comedy

Selected Works of King

Anything by Kerouac

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Anything about science, history, or religion by Asimov

On War

Schindler's List

Grimm's Fairy Tales

Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales

The Arabian Nights

The Oxford Companion to English Literature

On the Good Life

Meditations

Democracy in America

History of Western Philosophy

The Wit of Oscar Wilde

A History of the English-speaking Peoples

Anything by Hawking

Silent Spring

Island

Ishmael

A Brief History of Everything

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Millionaire Machine

Common Sense Economics

Goals! by Brain Tracy

Man's Search For Meaning

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Anna Karenina

Bhagavad Gita

Sophocles

Siddharta

Dhalgren

Something Happened

God Knows

Endgame (Script)

Voss

A Short History Of Nearly Everything

Out of Darkness

The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop

Papillon

The Stars My Destination

Zop Wallop

Common Sense, the Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings by Thomas Paine

The Red and the Black

Anything by Balzac (Lost Illusions)

Anything by Lovecraft

Njal's Saga

Anything by Schopenhauer

Anything by Rousseau

Leviathan

From Here to Eternity

The Thin Red Line

Anything by Brian Greene

Anything by Hesse

Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

The Martian Chronicles

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Story of Philosophy by Durant

The Picture of Dorian Gray

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Ficciones

One Flew over the ****oo's Nest

Anything by Terry Pratchett

The Godfather

Rosemary's Baby

Anything by Philip K. Dick

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

L'Etranger by Albert Camus
Click to expand...
 
Here's my list of all time favorites.

The God Delusion
Waiting For Godot (a play, not a book)
The Perks of Being a Wall Flower
Cat's Cradle
When You are Engulfed in Flames
We
Life of Pi
Brave New World
Lord of the Rings
1984
Catch 22
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Lolita
Slaughterhouse 5
A canticle for Liebowitz
 
JonathanMD said:
Better - by Atul Gwande
Complications - by Atul Gwande
First, Do No Harm - by Lisa Belkin
Intern - by Sandeep Juahar
How Doctor's Think - by Jerome Groopman
Doctors The Bibliography of Medicine - by Sherwin B. Nuland

Some Impressions:
http://4medschool.blogspot.com/search/label/jonathan's recommended reading
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Also read the two Gawande's and the Groopman, and those are just great reads to keep in the back of your mind for interview questions, but more importantly, to keep when you consider how to become a better doctor.
 
Daran said:
Jacked from a forum I frequent:
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Has anyone actually read Don Quixote in its entirety? If so Kudos your endurance should get you an automatic acceptance. that thing is a monster i am not willing to endure
 
Because I'm a nerd:

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
 
Just say Mountains Beyond Mountains is your favorite book, you grew up with a stethoscope in your tiny hand, and all you've ever wanted to do is help people. Auto-admit.
 
This is kind of nerdy as well, but Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World by Nick Lane is a very interesting read. He integrates many topics from the history of the earth to the current "push" for anti-oxidant drugs.
 
Bump on Complications. Clinical pathophysiology made redicuously simple is great. All the made redic simple are good, really. Clinical biochemistry is probably the quickest/easiest read.

As far as non-medical books...

The Stranger is a brilliant book. So is Daemeon (sp) by Hesse. Great Gatsby is a classic but still amazing.
 
The last four books I read (ratings out of five):

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (4.5/5)
The Three-Cornered World, Natsume Soseki (3/5)
Oedipus Rex, Sophocles (5/5, but that's because I'm insane)
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy (5/5)

I do NOT recommend you read Blood Meridian if you have a weak stomach. It is pretty much all bloodshed and disturbing imagery and the like, and I only rank it as 5/5 because it is BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN. I have never read anything that disturbed me like it did. (And it takes some doing to get used to McCarthy's style.)
 
1984
the fountainhead...(plan on reading atlas shrugged)
...

to be honest i cant think of anything else ive read as good as those

battle royal if you enjoy one screwed up story full of gore

shakespeare's hamlet (dont judge me 😏)

ive been looking for some good reads myself...

sitting on catch 22 and slaughterhouse five

so far so good👍
 
Any of Micheal Crichton - Jurassic Park, Lost World, and various other books

Clive Clusser - Too many good books to mention, Dirk Pitt Series (20 Books), Kurt Austin Series (7, 8th is in th works), Oregon Series (7 Books)

Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Series (3) + Eric Lustbader Bourne sequels (5 books)

Issac Asimov - Like this needs explanation

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game and related novels

And now more non-science-y

John Grisham

Tom Clancy

Ian Fleming - James Bond 😎

And on a more related note:

The making of the atomic bomb - Richard Rhodes

Guns, Germs, and steel - The fates of human societies by Jared Diamond
 
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0kazak1 said:
Any of Micheal Crichton - Jurassic Park, Lost World, and various other books
Click to expand...

WORD. That man was a genius. Shame he died. He wrote my favorite book, The Andromeda Strain, while he was in med school. Favorite author by FAR.

On that note, go read The Andromeda Strain. It will be more than worth your while.
 
Economics in one lesson is what I'm currently reading. If schoolworked didn't keep me bogged down, I would have finished it by now.

I'm a big Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum guy. I like many of Dan Brown's books as well.
 
Janieve said:
WORD. That man was a genius. Shame he died. He wrote my favorite book, The Andromeda Strain, while he was in med school. Favorite author by FAR.

On that note, go read The Andromeda Strain. It will be more than worth your while.
Click to expand...

That's one of my favorite too. My first if I remember correctly and what lead me to like his work.

Yeah Dan Brown is not bad, but he does not have too many books (5 now I think)
 
Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series, it has everything: humor, loss, perseverance, etc, etc .....

Anything Chuck Palahniuk is disturbing and interesting

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series is great, has romance, medicine, history, time travel, war, you name it.

On audiobook (great for commute) I recently finished Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem, a MUST read for everyone!

My husband is reading On Killing (the Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society) by Lt. Col Dave Grossman. My hubby is not much of a reader but he's really been talking it up. Looks like interesting reading especially if you're looking into military medicine. I'm hoping for some free time over Christmas 🙂

Since it was mentioned a few times above I'm going to see if I can find an audiobook for Atlas Shrugged now...
 
Dr McSexy said:
Economics in one lesson is what I'm currently reading. If schoolworked didn't keep me bogged down, I would have finished it by now.

I'm a big Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum guy. I like many of Dan Brown's books as well.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on Clancy and Ludlum, but not Brown. All of Brown's books are pretty much the same: Character A specializes in ______, something happens, Character B (opposite sex) is somehow involved/in trouble, Character C (trusted friend) lends help, and SPOILER!!!
Character C is always the villain. Always.
 
.
 
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Anything by Erik Larson. Especially The Devil in the White City.
 
Richard Rhodes. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. ISBN 0684813785.
 
Brothers Karamazov definitely.

Also, War And Peace is a nice read as well.

Good post!
 
War and Peace are you serious? I really like old literature but I read about four pages of that and swore to never return to it again. The Idiot is another book I started and could never force myself to finish.
 
The Language of God - Francis Collins
The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russell

Anyone read either? Much discussion usually ensues...
 
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