Summer Reading

Truzzi

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What would you recommend for a senior trying to expand his literacy? I'm looking for books both riveting and challenging. Something interesting that will also be good practice for the MCAT. I will also begin reading more academic journals in college, so I need to really up my level.

I can read challenging works, but not at the cost of entertainment. Also, I hate (but still respect) Dickens for any of you that were going to suggest him. I have my reasons.

Thanks.
 
Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Jules Verne
Got through part of it. A little thick and boring, but worth it.

The Scarlet Letter - Daniel Hawthorne
I'm assuming you've read this in high school. If not, try that. Very dense, romantic style literature.

Dubliners - James Joyce
Not as dense, but decently readable/entertaining with some good literary elements.

You may also want to look into writers like Virginia Woolf, Alexandre Dumas, Edgar Allen Poe etc...
 
I'm a big fan of Poe, and we read Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter in high school.

I'll definitely check into the others though. Thanks for the suggestions.

Anyone else have any recommendations?
 
Edgar Allen Poe is a fit match for what your looking for. His stories are rather challenging, and his use of words to illustrate a horrific picture is legendary. His use of suspense is unparalleled, and usually keeps the reader interested. Poe isn't for everybody, as most of his stories are rather "dark", and some people do not enjoy his writing style. Personally I think that his stories are quite good.

I'd recommend:
The Fall of the House of Usher
The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
http://poestories.com/index.php

Robin Cook is a physician and an author who writes mentally engaging stories about medicine. He creates very deep characters that the reader can easily connect with. I had to read the book "Crisis" last year in English class and it was hands down the best book I've ever read for school. Also, if your a fan of House, the books are comparable to the show in terms of suspense and mystery.

I'd recommend:
Crisis
Coma
Critical
Fever
Invasion

Hope this helps. 🙂
 
If you're into nonfiction, I would really really recommend:

Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body - Armand Marie Leroi
http://www.amazon.com/Mutants-Genetic-Variety-Human-Body/dp/0670031100
It's a collection of some of the most bizarre medical cases. It's also pretty well written.

The Blank Slate - Stephen Pinker
http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-M...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305763573&sr=1-1

But some of my favorite fictions:
Lolita - Nabokov
A clockwork orange
American Psycho - Bret easton ellis (ok, not really challenging on vocab, but whatever, i enjoyed it)
 
Poe is great for deep, dense and romantic literature similar to Shelley's Frankenstein and Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, but Woolf writes in a stream of consciousness style, which is a great genre/technique to have in your repertoire. It will teach you how to deeply analyze what you are reading, not just learn advanced vocabulary.
 
Under the Ether Dome (Harvard medical student and MGH resident experience a la 1L or the Paperchase.) 👍
House of God (book & movie). hahaha :laugh:
 
No one is going to be able to suggest something actually relevant unless you give a better idea of what you're interested in. A good idea would be to post similar titles to what you're looking for.

Personally, I'm spending the summer expanding on my philosophy background. I'll be doing it by taking a course for free through podcasts [several big name schools have nearly all of their courses recorded and available for free on their department websites, Berkeley and Oxford for sure]. What I've done is gone to the department websites, gone through the classes, and found something relevant, then downloaded the syllabus to see what materials I'll need. I can then take the course through podcasts while reading through the material. I think I've settled on a class by Prof. Dreyfus at Berkeley on Heidegger.

You can use this technique for expanding your education on any subject. All departments let you do this and have full webcasts of the lectures available online for free. You don't even have to do the whole class, just find a course that covers a text you want to learn about and use those webcasts as a resource. There is something to be said for reading through something and coming to an understanding of it on your own, but you honestly gain way more through the insight of someone well versed in the subject.

Then again, if you want something a bit less stiff and educational, I've recently enjoyed The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Ender's game, The once and future king, All things shining (FANTASTIC book by Dreyfus, the professor whose course I'm taking, about secular spirituality in the modern world, but has a heavy basis in ancient western lit ie oedipus, the odyssey, dante's inferno etc... very accessible even if you haven't read these though), Voltaire's Candide (Awesome read even if you don't like phil), and the alchemist... I'm just throwing titles at you at this point. PM me if you'd like some suggestions a bit more focuses to your tastes.

BTW, if you want something more science focused, I would recommend doing what I suggested above about taking a podcast course, but take a seminar type course that discusses scientific papers focused on a topic. The lectures will be interesting and stimulating, and you'll be able to review a good bit of science.
 
I'm reading 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot, and it's a great book. Goes through the medical ethics of taking a woman's cells (HeLa Cells) and not alerting the family. I'd recommend it.
 
I've got a lot of recommendations for medical books, but what about some of your favorite philosophy books?
 
No one is going to be able to suggest something actually relevant unless you give a better idea of what you're interested in. A good idea would be to post similar titles to what you're looking for.

Personally, I'm spending the summer expanding on my philosophy background. I'll be doing it by taking a course for free through podcasts [several big name schools have nearly all of their courses recorded and available for free on their department websites, Berkeley and Oxford for sure]. What I've done is gone to the department websites, gone through the classes, and found something relevant, then downloaded the syllabus to see what materials I'll need. I can then take the course through podcasts while reading through the material. I think I've settled on a class by Prof. Dreyfus at Berkeley on Heidegger.

You can use this technique for expanding your education on any subject. All departments let you do this and have full webcasts of the lectures available online for free. You don't even have to do the whole class, just find a course that covers a text you want to learn about and use those webcasts as a resource. There is something to be said for reading through something and coming to an understanding of it on your own, but you honestly gain way more through the insight of someone well versed in the subject.

Then again, if you want something a bit less stiff and educational, I've recently enjoyed The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Ender's game, The once and future king, All things shining (FANTASTIC book by Dreyfus, the professor whose course I'm taking, about secular spirituality in the modern world, but has a heavy basis in ancient western lit ie oedipus, the odyssey, dante's inferno etc... very accessible even if you haven't read these though), Voltaire's Candide (Awesome read even if you don't like phil), and the alchemist... I'm just throwing titles at you at this point. PM me if you'd like some suggestions a bit more focuses to your tastes.

BTW, if you want something more science focused, I would recommend doing what I suggested above about taking a podcast course, but take a seminar type course that discusses scientific papers focused on a topic. The lectures will be interesting and stimulating, and you'll be able to review a good bit of science.
👍 http://onlineuniversityrankings.org/2009/the-worlds-50-best-open-courseware-collections/

MIT and Berkeley video been good so far.🙂
 
What would you recommend for a senior trying to expand his literacy? I'm looking for books both riveting and challenging. Something interesting that will also be good practice for the MCAT. I will also begin reading more academic journals in college, so I need to really up my level.

I can read challenging works, but not at the cost of entertainment. Also, I hate (but still respect) Dickens for any of you that were going to suggest him. I have my reasons.

Thanks.

American literature can be tough for some people to comprehend, and plus the stories are pretty good.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" - Bierce
"Barn Burning" -Faulkner
"The Swimmer" -Cheever
"Babylon Revisited" -Fitzgerald
"Good Country People" -O'Conner
"The Yellow Wallpaper" -Gilman
"To Build a Fire" -London
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" -Hemingway
and Mark Twain of course

American Literature can be a challenge and is full of great authors.
 
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