Hopelessly long list of books I foolishly intend to read

1. Iserson’s Getting Into A Residency - Kenneth V. Iserson
   Probably the number one priority for me right now. Yes I am freaking out about this. No, this is not unusual among med students (at least not among the ones I know)
2. Evolution’s Rainbow - Joan Roughgarden
   Between reading this book and re-reading a couple of books from undergrad classes, I really hope to have a better understanding of a lot of gender and sexuality-related issues. Because, seriously, science is relevant to everything.
3. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
   Because I might enjoy it a lot, and because I like the idea of having read a classic work (there, I said it). But then again this may be one of those books where I end up picking it up, reading a page, and then putting it down because it’s so tedious (yes, I’m talking to you, Silas Marner by George Eliot). After a while, you have to admit defeat and say that you just cannot finish this book.
4. Harry Potter (books 3-7) - J. K. Rowling
   What I really want to do is to at least read Order of the Phoenix before watching the movie. That’s three (well, two-and-a-half) books by July. But I know people who read Half-Blood Prince in one evening.
5. Why We Get Sick - Randolph Nesse and George Williams
   I heard Nesse speak at my school, and I think he has a lot of interesting and important things to say, especially for the health profession. We’re so caught up with wanting to restore “optimum health,” when really, life is always changing, and there really has never been such a thing as optimum health in the history of our species. Evolution is about making us good enough to reproduce more than the other guy. Not about maximizing our enjoyment of life. The question is, how does this change the way we do medicine?
6. Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
   Everyone keeps talking about this book, and Diamond has done amazingly diverse work, including discoveries we have learned about in class.
7. Medical Nutrition and Disease - Lisa Hark and Gail Morrison; and
   ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription - American College of Sports Medicine
   Two books that I should really use to supplement my education. Nutrition and exercise, what could be more basic than that? And what easier (and cheaper) way to improve health in a lot of people. Including myself.
8. Awakenings - Oliver Sacks
   I always find his stories inspiring, like when I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. I’ve already seen the movie, so I know how it ends: De Niro doesn’t get the Oscar. Such a sad story.