Summer reading before starting? (NOT textbooks...)

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Pretty much anything by Crichton is great. Harvard-trained MD turned novelist, and he writes to an audience in a way that doesn't feel patronizing

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Start reading through the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin, the next book should be out by the time you finish your residency!
 
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Thanks for all the recs!

I'm a pretty avid reader and finished a couple books recommended earlier. I probably need to stick to things that aren't soul crushing since when breath becomes air @Dame_Maggie and flutter @AlmostAnMD were both not exactly encouraging :p but fun reads. WBBA was tough to get through at points, that was a deep book. Flutter interested me because EM is high on my list and still is. Good read, no regrets about getting it but WBBA was more evocative.

Gonna pick up Star Beast next and then The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. The description for that sounds fascinating. Thanks again all, especially @oldman and @gentlebalogna for what I bought next.

Lotta suggestions for King and Crichton. Read most of their works. Again I read a lot :p I grew up reading King in elementary school, I distinctly remember my 4th grade teacher calling a parent-teacher conference because I was caught reading cycle of the werewolf! Dad has a huge collection and didn't gaf. Told her to stop caring about what I read and to this day I still loan out of his impressive library.

song of ice and fire is a good suggestion as well but like most I'm waiting on WOW. Terrified about GRRM dying.
 
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When the Grass Stops Growing by Carol Mather, cool memoir from an original SAS member gallivanting about the desert blowing up Italian/German airfields
 
Excited to start medical school at a decent place in the midwest

getting geared up and ready to move, but also looking for book recommendations

Not textbooks. I imagine I'll have plenty of reading on the to-do list this fall :p But more fun, beach readin' stuff.

thoughts? Mostly looking for good non-fiction or interesting fiction. Can be medical or otherwise.

What are y'all readin?
Hey! I didn't make it through all the responses so please excuse me if any of these are repeats. Right now I'm reading Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher by Brandy Schillace, she is a medical historian and steampunk icon. Her books are really well written.

Interesting fiction: Conjure Women by Afia Atakora. It's a well researched historical fiction about a family of enslaved medicine women around the time of emancipation.

Totally different: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. This is a paradigm altering book about fungi. It reads more like a novel than a textbook for sure, but it is still full of info.

These were a couple of the books I have read this summer that gave me some peace between work and masters courses! Enjoy
 
These are some light summer fiction reading that you may find enjoyable.
Medical or medical related

The Interns by Richard Frede

MASH: A Tale of Three Army Doctors by, Richard Hooker

Doc Martin: Practice Makes Perfect by Sam North

Critical Care: A Novel by Richard Dooling

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

Paper Mask by John Collee

The Physician by Noah Gordon


Non Medical

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carol

How I Became Stupid by Martin Page

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Clason

A Million Ways To Die In The West by Seth MacFarlane

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
 
Excited to start medical school at a decent place in the midwest

getting geared up and ready to move, but also looking for book recommendations

Not textbooks. I imagine I'll have plenty of reading on the to-do list this fall :p But more fun, beach readin' stuff.

thoughts? Mostly looking for good non-fiction or interesting fiction. Can be medical or otherwise.

What are y'all readin?
This blog has some books!
 
I finished All the Young Men: A memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South. It's a memoir by Ruth Coker Burks, a woman (not in healthcare) who started caring for HIV/AIDS patients in Hot Springs Arkansas from the mid 1980s onwards. It's a really easy read. It reads just like she's talking to you and you get a lot of Southern (white) culture. It's truly remarkable how she started doing HIV tests at home, giving out medication, doing her own research at a time when not many physicians or healthcare professionals would. I think it's a great example of finding an issue and doing something concrete about it. Highly recommended!


I started Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice by Rupa Marya (internist at UCSF) and Raj Patel. This book is essentially about how capitalism, colonialism and systems of oppression cause inflammation (inflammatory diseases/processes) in the body and the world. It's in the vein of public intellectual works (e.g. Sowell, Krugman, Gladwell, there are too many to list) so it's not really nuanced. They stitch together a lot of different threads to create an interesting framework/perspective. I'd still recommend it but don't take them literally. They cite some great sources and give students and practitioners of traditional allopathic medicine another angle to consider.

 
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If you want something medically related, consider In Shock by Dr. Rana Awdish. She discusses the culture of medicine as she experiences being a critically ill patient as a physician. This was assigned reading in the intro class at my school and it absolutely blew me away!
 
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