pursuitofsanity's 2009 bookworming

I have been an enthusiastic, if disorganized, reader for as long as I can remember. Over the last couple of years I have tried to keep better track of the books I read, the way I think about those books, and the way I think about reading in general. I attempt this mostly by journalling a good bit, and writing only sporadically in my blog (http://www.bookwormingit.blogspot.com).

The last time I can remember that I was able to keep track of the things that I had read for any significant amount of time was the summer before fourth grade, when the Public Library’s summer reading program was giving out coupons for free Subway and Carvel ice cream. I’m hoping that the slightly more healthy and adult motivation of belonging to a community of readers like this one will help keep me on track.

Making lists of things to read has never suited me particularly well, because on the whole I will read whatever I’m in the mood for regardless of what the list suggests. So in the spirit of self-knowledge, I am not going to be making lists this year. My goal really is to just keep track of the things that I read, and to write reviews and/or blog entries for all of the books that I finish.

I honestly have no idea how many books I read in the average year. I tend to be prone to binge reading… non-stop for several days or weeks before I get distracted by school or life or something and slow to a more reasonable pace. But I’ve given up TV for this year, so I imagine that will mean that more reading than usual will get done.

I’m a first year medical student, and there is an amazing amount of reading involved in that endeavor, but I don’t really find myself thinking of that as reading in the same way that I think about the books that I pick up for pleasure, so I won’t be writing about it unless something strikes me as particularly interesting or important.

Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are ALWAYS welcome. I suppose we'll just have to see how this goes.

Welcome to the group pursuitofsanity.

Welcome, pursuitofsanity! It's nice to see another (future) doc here; kiwidoc is the only other physician I've encountered on LT. I'll definitely keep an eye on your posts.

Yes, welcome. Please feel free to tell us about whatever you are reading.

So this week I read my Early Reviewer copy of The Addict: One Patient, One Doctor, One Year by Michael Stein. I've posted a review, and I won't repeat that here.

I did enjoy the book, but I think that mostly came from being interested in Dr. Stein's perspective as a physician treating addicts (and especially as a physician that has chosen to treat addicts from the perspective of an internist rather than that of a psychiatrist.) I think that he did a good job being honest about the struggles that he has dealing with these patients, their behavior and the choices that they make.

I was particularly struck by a passage at the beginning of the book in which he explains the fact that he doesn't engage in community outreach with addicts in addition to his work in treatment and research.
Stein writes, "outside the hospital, I am not fearless and I am not particularly altruistic... I hope that my clinic exam room is a refuge for some addicts who find their way to me, but off-duty, I am essentially selfish."

In light of the recent discussion in kidzdoc's thread about the stresses of training and working in medicine, I was struck by what seems like Stein's need to justify the fact that he is not always "on-duty." What makes him feel that he needs to explain the sentence, "I eat chicken sausage and white beans rather than going out into the night to find lost and starving souls whom I could bring in and help."? I see the same issue in my peers, they seem driven to work 24/7, and anything less is "selfish," a character flaw that needs to be explained, rather than an attempt at creating a more balanced life for themselves and their families.

I also read Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, a good collection of stories by ZZ Packer The first, "Brownies" is far and away the best. The rest of the collection seemed in some ways to rehash tales that have been told before, the girl who escapes her country life and runs away to the city only to encounter drug dealers and prostitutes, the high school debate star who gets sucked into unwise adventures by his deadbeat father. I'm not saying that the stories weren't well-crafted, they certainly are, but aside from "Brownies" none of them jumped off the page and made me want to tell others to read them.

Still short fiction makes a wonderful and ideally packaged study break, and I have exams in a week and a half... so I can't complain.

Another welcome.

(We are, incidentally, going in opposite directions. I find sanity much too boring and overrated. My pursuit is of insanity. :-) )

I have been fascinated by the kidzdoc/kiwidoc/you discussions and will be following your thread with much interest.

Thanks for the interest polutropos. Hopefully knowing that I have some folks paying attention will keep me honest.

My alias was actually inspired by a quote from Saul Bellow's novel Henderson the Rain King

"Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too"

I like to think that, given my interest in psychiatry, the pursuit of sanity is the form of madness that I have embraced. It's certainly more the pursuit than the sanity itself that I find interesting. Perhaps our directions are not so opposite as you first thought.

Nice review of "The Addict", pursuitofsanity.

There was a review of two new books on addiction in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life by Benoit Denizet-Lewis and The End of My Addiction by Olivier Ameisen, M.D., a French cardiologist:

The personal pain behind addiction

Thanks for the link kidzdoc, I was looking at a copy of America Anonymous at the bookstore last week, it looks interesting, but I have long had myself solidly under a no new hardcover rule. I'll consider it again once it hits paperback. I will certainly have to get my hands on a copy of The End of My Addiction; I am fascinated by psychopharmacology....

On an entirely different note, I just finished The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. It's the 8th book in the fantasy series The Wheel of Time. I've been plowing through the series slowly for about 6 months now. Each book is at least 600 pages long. The series is not exactly a great work of literature, but Jordan has done an exceptional job creating a rich and detailed alternate world, and dozens (hundreds?) of fun characters. The books in the series are great for me at times when school is stressful because they're entertaining, easy to read, and they have fairly short chapters, which makes it possible for me to take reading study breaks without them taking over the whole afternoon. They can be a little repetitive, and at times there are too many details and characters to keep track of, at least when I am also trying to keep track of the origin, insertion, innervation and action of every muscle in the human body. (Thankfully, I have found an online database that will remind me of details, because if I was introduced to a minor character 2000 pages ago in October, I might not remember him or her upon their return.)

Unfortunately, Jordan died before finishing the last of the 12 books in the series. It is being completed by another author, I forget whom, and should be coming out this coming fall. Hopefully I'll continue to enjoy the story right though the end.

Well, while still in exam mode, I read Winter's Heart, book 9 in The Wheel of Time. The story continues to keep me interested, and this one ended on more of a cliffhanger than usual. I admit I was tempted to read on to book 10, but I managed to restrain myself.

Once I finished my tests, I went on my customary post exam reading binge... and I've since plowed through The Memory Keeper's Daughter, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Island of Lost Girls.

All these are library books, so when I finish writing the reviews, they'll be posted under my other account troubleactingnormal, but it might be a few days, because this is a super short block... and I have those pesky final exam things again in two weeks.

Medical school is AWESOME.

A positive review of Winters' Heart? I think you might be in a small minority.* Although it's been so long since I read it myself I no longer remember much. Jordan is the author who got me reading books - in high school 18 years ago!

*LT ratings average 3.38 with sounds OK, but, with 143 ratings under "3" and 166 ratings at "3", in my experience that is LT speak for "disappointing".

Meh, I've been reading The Wheel of Time as my exam cram study breaks. Perhaps this lowers my standards, since it doesn't take much to be more appealing than the idea of memorizing all of the enzymes in the steroid biosynthesis pathway (and all of the particularly awful things that can happen to you if one of them goes bad.)

The averages for Winter's Heart and The Path of Daggers are exactly the same. I think it's a bit of a toss up. I haven't enjoyed these last two as much as the earlier books, but I do still care about the story, and 9 books and God knows how many pages in, that is saying something. I personally had to attribute some of the decrease in my engagement to the fact that it had been a while since I read the last one.

Still, I'm hoping that those two represent something of a mid-series slump and, for me at least, Winter's Heart seemed, towards the end, to be pulling out of it. I really did want to know what's next. The averages for Crossroads of Twilight don't necessarily support me in this hope, but we'll see when I get there.

I am about 90% sure that I first read The Eye of the World in 7th or 8th grade, and then got distracted. I think that perhaps I would have enjoyed the whole series more if I had read them all then, at a time where I would have had less other things in my mind and my life. My 13 and 14 year old self would have thought nothing of reading all 11 books over the course of 8 weeks or so, and at the time, school wasn't challenging enough to distract me. Of course, I think part of what deterred me was the fact that at the time the series was only about halfway done, and I have always preferred to wait for the whole series to be complete so that I don't get stuck on a cliffhanger with the answers still unwritten. Of course, I am setting myself up for that here, since Book 12 won't be out until this fall.

I just looked at your library, you've read them all fairly recently. Please, don't let me discourage you. I have some issues with books 7-10, but I still like the series quite a bit. I hope I catch your comments on the next one.

Oh no worries, I'm hard to discourage.

I actually started because my fiancee decided that I needed something "epic" to read to distract me from medical school, so he sent me the first six books in boxed sets. Whatever else I end up thinking about the series in the end, they have served that function beautifully.

OK. I got distracted by life. It happens. Here's a rough list of the things that I have read since last posting. I'll try to catch up with some reviews (maybe) and I will at least attempt to do better.

No promises for at least a few weeks though, my fiancee and I are moving in together, and I think that process is going to take up most of my not studying time.

On a brighter note though... for the rest of the year, medical school is all about the brain... and I REALLY love the brain.

OK, books:

I got on a bit of a nostalgia kick and read: Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island and Anne of Windy Poplars I might or might not finish a full reread of the series. I loved them when I was tiny and I still found them charming this go-round. Although Anne of Green Gables still outshines the rest for me.

Then I moved on to a couple of medicine related books. In honor of St. Patrick's Day I read An Irish Country Doctor and then I moved on to Intern: A Doctor's Initiation and the early Reviewer's book Brain Surgeon: A Doctor's Inspiring Encounters with Mortality and Miracles by Keith Black

I'm sure that I'll come across others that I read in the last few weeks while I am cleaning up (and packing up) my apartment, but that's at least a start. Right. Awesome.

>10 pursuitofsanity:, 11 The last (theoretically, at least) Jordan installment is due out in November, I think (saw it listed in the latest Locus magazine, along with the next G.R.R.Martin). I don't read these but my oldest daughter does. She began in very early high school (circa '94?) with the Jordan, Eddings, and Goodkind books. She only keeps up with the Jordan and Martin now, I think (although she was really miffed about that last Martin installment).

avaland,

I was miffed about the first Martin installment. I did not finish it.

From what I understand, the first volume of the last Jordan book comes out this November. Apparently, what's left will be published in three volumes, probably over the next three years (I've head publication of one volume each November 2009, 2010, 2011). According to the website of Brandon Sanderson who is finishing the series, the final total for these three volumes will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 words. (EEK!)

I'm just sad that there's going to be so long of a wait, although I understand how these things happen, I feel like with a world as complex as The Wheel of Time, the reader forgets a lot of the details in a year off... and I sure as hell will not be rereading all 8000 pages again to remind myself before the last one comes out.

Such is life I suppose.

>18 pursuitofsanity: oh, for dog's sake! I guess we should have known it would go on and on. Thanks though, I'll pass that on to my daughter (she seems to have less patience for these things now that she's 'older {30})

I never really had such patience. I tend not to bother to start the series until it's "finished." Especially since I forget a lot when I have to wait too long between books. I've enjoyed the series so far, but it remains to be seen if it will be able to hold my attention if I have to wait for years to actually get to the end.

So the day before yesterday I picked The Book of Lost Things up off the "cheap books" display at the local bookstore. And while I didn't know much about it before I dove in... I really LOVED this book. Connolly does a great job reinventing the fairy tales that we all know and love to reveal the dark sides, and creates a beautiful and complex alternate world for them to exist in.

Annoying though, was the last chapter, one of the "tacked on to wrap things up" variety, which I just didn't find satisfying.

Still, I totally recommend this very dark but fun romp. I very much enjoyed it.

>21 pursuitofsanity: I really liked this book also. It's a delightful concept - imagine what our worlds would be like if they were made up out of the all the books we have read! I remember thinking that the ending was going to be predictable and what I thought would be that predictable ending turned out not to be the ending.

Have you read Shadow of the Wind? If not, you might like it.

>21 pursuitofsanity: I adored The Book of Lost Things. Have you read The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue? I read the two books practically back to back and adored both. Donohue has a new book out Angels of Destruction. It is not of the caliber of The Stolen Child, but it is still pretty good.

I have read The Shadow of the Wind and I totally adored it. But I haven't read/heard of The Stolen Child, so perhaps I shall try to hunt that down. There has been a no book buying rule agreed on until my finacee and I get all the books we already have happily settled into our new apartment, so it might have to wait a bit.

Thanks for the suggestions folks.

Just finished Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd. It's a bit of a monster, 1032 pages... but I really enjoyed it. Rutherfurd follows several families through the history of the area surrounding Salisbury in England, from the Neolithic hunters through the 1980s. Each chapter deals with one period, and there are only limited connections between them, some are far better than others, yet the novel still manages to hold together as a whole, and it's a pretty good read. I liked Rutherfurd's London better, but this is still a fun book.

>23 urania1:, I too read The Book of Lost Things and The Stolen Child back to back and loved them both. I actually thought the ending of TBoLT was really poignant & I am generally the first person to yell "Cheesy!" (an indication of serious immaturity on my part). I go back and forth between thinking the ending of The Road was excessively sentimental, if that tells you anything. Its interesting how it was marketed - at least to me, I heard of it because my boyfriend's younger brother had to read it for 8th grade English - as a young adult novel, but I felt that only an adult, who could look back on the past the way the narrator does at the end of the book, could really appreciate the whole thing.

Thanks for the tip about Donohue's new book, urania.

Sorry for falling off the face of the Earth. Ill try to do better. I have been reading the whole time though... and the (completeish) list is:

Tell Me Where It Hurts : A nice book that brings to the present (and to the world of house pets) the tradition of James Herriot. It was a pretty quick read for me, and I found it amusing. It also really drove home for me the frustrations that must come with choosing to be a vet. If you loved All Creatures Great and Small you'll probably like this too.

Outcasts United: I liked this MUCH more than I thought that I would. It was a review copy, so I can't complain too much, but the degree of small errors and typos was distracting, so I hope they fixed that in the actual release. This is a book that's about WAY more than soccer, and I hope that people won't be steered away (as I would have been had they not sent it to me for free) by the idea of 300 pages of play by play, because that's not what you'll find.

Neuromancer: My fiancee had been pushing this one pretty hard, and (as always) he was quite right to do so. A MUST READ for the sci-fi set, although I suppose that very few are as late coming to it as I am. If you've read it once, it might be worth reading it again. It'll drive home how groundbreaking it was if you keep this in mind: Gibson wrote that book on a TYPEWRITER.

Delicate Edible Birds: Solidified Lauren Groff as one of my favorites. It's a near perfect collection. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

Bright Shiny Morning: I always find myself distracted by/struggling with Frey's random style and lak of punctuation at the beginning of his books, and then totally hooked by the end. This was no exception. Some of the characters and storylines were far stronger than others and one of them stuck with me (and made me vaguely uncomfortable) for a few days afterwards.

What Is The What: You should read this now.

Fantastic Voyage: You should probably read something else now.

I'll try to do better. Hope all is well.

Well, I have officially survived first year of medical school. Bring on the summer reading binge.

Recently I've read:

Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese: This was the May selection of the AMSA (American Medical Student Association) reading discussion group, and it was wonderful.

The Count of Monte Cristo: I had never attempted this monster before, although I purchased a copy on a friend's recommendation sometime last year. What on Earth made me think that it would be a good idea to pick it up right before finals, I don't know, but thankfully, my finacee had the good sense to take it away from me for a few days. It's addictive, and exciting, but it's looooooooong. My unabridged translation ran over 1200 pages.

The Given Day: I've always found Dennis Lehane's books entertaining, but this one is far better than a lot of his other work. The Given Day takes place in Boston (my favorite city) between 1918 and 1920, leading up to the policemen's strike. While it has some slower parts, and I didn't feel like I was really engaged until about 50 pages in, once it got going, I was hooked. I didn't know much about this period before reading this, so I don't know how accurate his historical representation is, but it was exciting to read.

Anyway, now I'm in summer reading, and summer reading is usually a book every day or two situation, so I'll be here a lot more... I promise.