I started reading again: 18 books in 2019

Somewhere in Sacramento

Looking at the title, this seems a pretty pitiful number, but certainly much better than previous years (close to zero). Despite four months of 90-100+ hour workweeks, this year I have had more free time than all the other years of medical school, and suddenly began to read for leisure again.

I remember what it was like to be a voracious reader as a child and a teenager, and was increasingly disillusioned with myself for numbing my brain with endless social media. I even throw podcasts into this since I definitely use them as a way to pass time without really gaining anything from them. So my month in Chicago kickstarted what will hopefully be a habit of reading more, writing more, and being more critical and deliberate with the content I consume, and how I choose to use my precious free time.

Bolded and highlighted titles are those that I strongly recommend. Italicized titles are those I am currently reading and expect to finish before the year is over.

1. The Hazel Wood - Melissa Albert
2. I'm Not Dying with You Tonight - Kimberley Jones, Gilly Segal
3. The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon
4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid
5. Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty
6. Becoming - Michelle Obama
7. The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware
8. An Enchantment of Ravens - Margaret Rogerson
9. The River at Night - Erica Ferencik
10. Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
11. Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo
12. Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
13. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
14. This is Going to Hurt - Adam Kay
15. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness - Susannah Cahalan
16. No Exit - Taylor Adams
17. The Outsider - Stephen King
18. Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng

I expect to keep up this pace of reading into the first quarter of 2020 since I'll be traveling for residency interviews and not socializing with my classmates while I'm on the road. I don't really have a set TBR, but here are some of the books I definitely intend to hit in 2020.

1. The Secret Commonwealth - Phillip Pullman
2. Dear Girls - Ali Wong
3. House of Leaves - Mark Z. Daneilewski (RR)
4. Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo
5. Catch and Kill - Ronan Farrow

What does the future hold for me, and this blog? I really don't know that answer (other than I seriously hope everything works out and I match into orthopedic surgery), but hopefully I can use this space to log my books and talk about them in manageable batches. Looking at this list, it definitely seems my tastes are shifting away from fantasy and science fiction and towards contemporary mysteries and thrillers. Additionally, my goal is to read more medical humanities since my medical school library has an abundance of them (and everybody is too busy studying to read them for fun, except the graduating students).

Wish I could find a book to live in

That's some wishful thinking, but for the past few weeks, I've been trying to do just that. Amidst my disappointing MD application cycle and obstacles in my personal and academic life, I've felt helpless and lost. I've more or less accepted that I'll be reapplying to med school either next year or the year after, which is a huge blow to my self-esteem and my general perspective. I won't belabor the point, but it's easy for me to say with great confidence that I've been on a steady decline in emotional health since July of this year.

No wonder, then, that I blew through the entire Inheritance Cycle during Thanksgiving break (I should have prepared more for the interview that occurred right after, but at the time, I thought I'd done enough), then began reading the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik during finals week. I have always favored fantasy novels, but only recently have I really acknowledged them as escapism. Dense worldbuilding, and plot-driven (not to say that the characters aren't wonderfully engaging and developed) fantasy novels are the dazzling distractions against my melancholy, and bleak future.

I've been talking my sister's ear off about this series since winter break started, and though I'm only partway through the fifth book Victory of Eagles, I have half a mind to just start over from the beginning of the series for a second round. Though some plot points can seem contrived or silly, the general effect is a good one. How can I put it? Temeraire was made to be adapted into screen. Some of the supporting cast is bland and flat, but the dialogue is always engaging and drives the plot along.

Anyhow, the tl;dr version is that dragon-based fantasy novels are distracting me from the responsibilities and misery of my depressing future as a med school reapplicant.

--

Another thing, then. The title of this post draws from "Look what they've done to my song, Ma" by Melanie Safka, covered by Miley Cyrus and Melanie, which has become surprisingly (and painfully) relevant throughout this semester.

Indeed, I've felt as if my brain has been picked apart, then put back in all the wrong way just in time for me to bumble through my interviews. More importantly, I've become increasingly reliant upon/emotionally supported by my family, especially my Mom throughout this year.

Summer reading

My diary and my reading list -- slightly more aesthetically pleasing than just a page ripped out of a steno pad.

I've had the last of my final exams and am one paper away from being free to have my life consumed by medical school apps. This means the beginning of a summer of recreational reading!

Recreational reading is a term that I've come to like a lot. I don't get to do it at all during the academic year, which is unfortunate. And when I do get a chance, it's often during breaks where I reread my favorites and never pick up something new.

This is the MD app summer, so it's only appropriate that I stuff my list with meducational things. Meducational in this context refers to my immersion in the ethical, practice-of-medicine-oriented side of medicine, the life behind the career that I hope to enter. Basically, I want the non-technical side.

Summer Reading 2015

1. The Once and Future King -- T.H. White
2. The House of God -- Samuel Shem
3. The Emperor of all Maladies -- Siddhartha Mukherjee
4. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down -- Anne Fadiman

Going down the list, then. The Once and Future King is one of my favorite, moral compass-orienting novels that (grandiosely) helped define my personal sense of ethics and the human condition. High-faluting statement aside, I read TOaFK at a vulnerable, malleable time in my life. It was the beginning of the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, my first summer living in my apartment, my first summer at the clinic, my first summer in the lab. I had come out of a semester that academically beat me down and left me questioning who the hell I was and what the hell I wanted to make of my life. The Once and Future King is a whimsical, acutely self-aware novelization of the rise and fall of King Arthur and Camelot. It's difficult to read it as only a swords-and-sorcery fantasy novel alone or a handbook on the human condition, on 'might' and 'right' and the ethical challenge of leadership by fiat and leadership by example, and a whole lot of other things. Regardless of whether it has a place in the Arthurian canon or not (well...) it certainly forms an integral portion of my own ethical canon. I  read it summer 2013, summer 2014, and will do so for as long as I can.

The House of God is the infamous creature that apparently is required reading for all bright young things interested in becoming a physician. I haven't read it yet, but I do like gallows humor and have some measure of interest in the crass and abrasive golden age of medicine. Also, I liked Scrubs.

The Emperor of all Maladies won a Pulitzer prize, and I remember it being all over the public library in my hometown when it came out. Not terribly interested in oncology, but medical anthropology seems to be something I'm getting interested in.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: a Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures wears many hats. On one hand, it's a biography of the cultural clashes between Hmong immigrants and the relentlessly bureaucratic (but well-intentioned) healthcare system of the US. On the other, it's a handbook on the ethnography, anthropology, and history of the Hmong in southeast Asia and the Hmong in the US. It's a manifesto for cultural competency and humility in the medical systems of this country, and a cry for compassion and empathy and open-mindedness. It's required reading for anthropology students here and there, and the incoming class of the Yale School of Medicine.

I'll add to this list as I finish books. I'm probably going to limit myself on the meducating and gorge myself silly on A Song of Ice and Fire as I've done these past two summers (MCAT summer included).

A [baker's] dozen of the best Moby-Dick art

So my favorite piece of written anything is Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, or The Whale. I read it every Christmas as a birthday treat to myself. It's a work that demands your full attention for long stretches of time, no slacking off on deck, keep your eyes peeled at the horizon. There's a gold doubloon for you if you spot the beast. Harpoon at the ready.

About a week ago, I went to an impromptu dinner with some of my friends, and I learned just then that one of them, DK, was reading Moby-Dick for his English class. At Berkeley, engineers do have to take some humanities classes, and it always seems like we mope about them rather than enjoy those courses for what they are. To my delight, DK, an EECS through and through, loved reading it. We spent dinnertime talking excitedly about Moby-Dick, from spout to fluke, every symbol and sign and every theory we had, and we got DK's CS project partners, new friends of mine, eager to read this book for the very first time.

A clump of engineers talking about Moby-Dick over burritos and chips - now that's something I live for. I love that book. I love it. It's cliche and it's bombastic and operatic and so heavy-handed, but I love that book.

Anyhow, this post is really just to get me excited for my birthday read. From Pinterest, I culled my favorite pieces of art for or inspired by Herman Melville's leviathan.



12. Japanese cover - unsourced

The only one here where Moby-Dick is not a white whale. A stylistic choice here, and I do like the woodblock-effect. My favorite theme of the work appears here - note the stars in the water. The ocean as the Universe, Moby-Dick himself as the Universe, as God, the Creator, the Destroyer.



11. Moby Dick - Max Bardin

The baleful whale. The only Jaws-styled piece that I'll include here, though you'll see many diving poses in this post. Anyhow, this is very moody and very simple, which is fine by me.



10. Rockwell Kent, one of many

Rockwell Kent has done quite a bunch of Moby-Dick pieces, but I liked this one for the very Art Deco look. It's different. I sort of like it a lot.



9. Moby Dick, Erika Gallagher

Again with the woodblock. This one is more striking and frenetic, which fits the situation. Whatever sort of maritime feelings it stirs in me - and it really does inspire me to quit college and run off to 19th century Cape Cod...sort of - I can't ignore that it looks like Moby-Dick has baleen, and that the boat has a sail.



8. Moby Dick, Rachel Shankman

I like this style. It's modern and I particularly like the colors. Of the pieces shown so far, this has got to be the most oversize whale, but given that we are told that the whale can smite folk with its fluke, that's no issue.



7. Moby Dick, Umberto Scalabrini

This one. Now this one gets it. It's so simple, but it's so effective. It's striking. Look at it. Who is that in the whale's eye? Is it Ahab? Ishmael? Starbuck? Me? Probably me. How are we compared to the whale? To the Universe and God? What does that eye see? Questions. Mysteries upon mysteries.




6. Various, Barry Moser

Again, I love this style. Woodcut/block-like. Also, look at the dude riding the dolphin,



5. Moby Dick, Rachael Wong

Truly this is the white whale. I think the way everything is staged, the wake and the deep, the beast itself, everything looks good. However, I have no idea what that boat is - the harpooners' boat or the Pequod? Really, I'm wondering.



4. The Penguin Classics edition

One of the most common covers you'll see. It's a beauty. It's so clean and simple. It's beautiful.



3. The Folio Society - unsourced

The Devil's in the details. I've mentioned stars in the water, but here, with the stark white of the White Whale, the utter lack of title, we truly have a representation of the Universe on our hands. Vassal fish by the fluke, and a stream of water/bubbles/energy/whatever from the blowhole. There are harpoons on the spine, and all in all, it's a beautiful, beautiful cover.



2. Unsourced

It's a shame that I can't find who made this - and the other unsourced ones, of course. This one is great. The various characters scattered about Moby-Dick really make it for me. Note the small Queequeg in the corner, floating on his coffin. Retroactive spoiler alert.


1. Both unsourced - of course

Just look at these ones. By now, you'll know I love the Moby-Dick is the Universe/God/everythingandnothing but the first one really hammers it home. The White Whale takes up the sky, the entire space. There is nothing but whale. The bottom cover is one that I see quite a lot in stores, and it pretty accurately/comically portrays the last standoff between Moby-Dick and the men of the Pequod. It's a wonder. They're both wonders.