What I read in 2016

The little one is a bit older and I had marginally less call this year, but I also had to take the boards in June, so reading time definitely benefitted from the flexibility of ebooks on the phone and the magical powers of Audible. Overall, it was a better reading year than 2015.

1. The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth (fun language romp)
2. Stoner by John Williams (quiet, understated, lovely)
3. The Buddha Walks into a Bar by Lodro Rinzler
4. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (of course I cried)
5. Corsair by James L. Cambias
6. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (Pulitzer winner)
7. The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein (1970s sci-fi, not the band)
8. The Bogleheads Guide to Investing by Mel Lindauer, Taylor Larimore, and Michael LeBoeuf
9. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
10. The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances by The Oatmeal
11. Calamity by Brandon Sanderson (The Reckoners #3)
12. Medical School 2.0 by David Larson
13. Pay Yourself First by David Hurd and James Hemphill
14. Changing Outcomes by David Hurd and James Hemphill
15. The Cartel by Don Winslow (incredibly gruesome but so good)
16. Physician Finance by KM Awad
17. A Doctor’s Basic Business Handbook by Brandon Bushnell
18. The Year They Tried to Kill Me by Salvatore Iaquinta (to me, the new House of God)
19. So You Got Into Medical School…Now What? By Daniel Paull
20. Why Medicine? By Sujay Kusagra
21. Broadcasting Happiness by Michelle Gielan
22. Bream Gives Me Hiccups by Jesse Eisenberg
23. The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson (Wax & Wayne #1)
24. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
25. Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley (audiobook perfectly narrated by John Hodgman)
26. The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates
27. My Year of Running Dangerously by Tom Foreman
28. What They Don’t Teach You at Medical School by Dr. David Kashmer (still feel like that’s the wrong preposition in the title…)
29. What if? by Randall Munroe
30. Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson (Wax & Wayne #2)
31. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (so depressing)
32. A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton (this was surprisingly fun)
33. The Earth Moved by Amy Stewart (apparently earthworms are really important)
34. Drinking Water by James Salzman (really wanted this to be like Kurlansky’s Salt or Cod, but it wasn’t anywhere near as good)
35. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
36. The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel
37. Diet Cults by Matt Fitzgerald
38. The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson (long before we demoted Pluto, we used to think there was a hidden planet Vulcan. Weird!)
39. Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang
40. The House of Wigs by Joshua Allen
41. The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson (Wax & Wayne #3)
42. The Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (well-deserved Pulitzer winner)
43. Bricking It by Nick Spalding
44. The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee (between the two, Emperor is better)
45. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J. K. Rowling
46. The Element by Ken Robinson
47. The Thirteen Word Retirement Plan by Stephen Nelson
48. Student Loan Debt 101 by Adam Minsky
49. The 4 Percent Universe by Richard Panek
50. Simple Sabotage by Robert M. Galford, Bob Frisch, and Cary Greene (the pdf of the CIA’s declassified original field manual that inspired it is better).
51. As You Wish by Cary Elwes
52. Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson
53. The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Huge winner, great novella)
54. The Medical Entrepreneur by Steven M. Hacker
55. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
56. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
57. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (just lovely)
58. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive #2) by Brandon Sanderson
59. The Wealth of Humans by Ryan Avent (smart writing about technological innovation and societal change)
60. TED Talks by Chris Anderson
61. Medium Raw by Anthony Bordain
62. Animal Farm by George Orwell
63. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (was really great as an audiobook)
64. How to Think About Money by Jonathan Clements
65. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
66. Ready Player One by Earnest Cline (fun homage to classic video games and 80s culture masquerading as a novel)
67. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

Classics I visited included a Tale of Two Cities, The Jungle, and Animal Farm, which were all super depressing. I continue to wonder why I read any of the pop-psych/inspirational/self-help type books given that they are all approximately the same and should nearly always be an essay or two and not drawn out to book length. I also read a bunch of short finance, med student, and doctor books for research/blog purposes, which were almost all meh.

On the fun side, I did catch up on most of Brandon Sanderson’s books while waiting for Patrick Rothfuss and George RR Martin to finish their next books. Now I have to wait for Sanderson’s third Stormlight book as well, which won’t come out for another year (and the last book in Mistborn Era 2 is like two years away).

Did love The Alchemist though. Just a beautiful, lovely little story. And every doctor should read The Emperor of Maladies.