Reading After Undergraduate

As I mentioned in one of my blog posts or another, there have been many more opportunities to learn now that my schooling isn't getting in the way (as much).  Maybe that's not fair-- Graduate School is more demanding than my Undergraduate Schooling was.  It's just that Graduate School isn't more demanding than all the things I was doing while I was in Undergrad.  Anyway, I've been reading a whole lot more, and I want to keep a catalog of what I've accomplished since graduating.  It will be nice to look back on.

I'm having a little bit of trouble deciding, in the realm of textbooks, what is worth putting on here and what isn't.  Some of my textbooks I'm required to read... but that doesn't mean that I don't want to!  And in other cases, I decidedly do not want to read them.  For the time, I'm only going to include here books that I've finished.  For some, I've written reviews/descriptions (I've linked them).  For others I can say that I probably will not be writing a review (because, let's face it, not many of my readers will be interested in what I think of "Div, Grad, Curl, and All That").  But if there's a book on here that you'd like to see a review of, let me know.  Worst case-scenario, it will force me to keep the ideas fresher in my mind.

If you've got books that you think I should read, please don't hesitate to let me know!  Send me an email at bamoyers a gmail d com or by commenting here.

Fiction

• Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (Summer 2011)
• Stars in my Pockets, Like Grains of Sand, Samuel Delaney (Summer 2011)
• Foundation, Isaac Asimov (Summer 2011)
  
• Foundation and Empire, Isaac Asimov (Summer 2011)
  
• Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov (Summer 2011)
• Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov (Summer 2011)
• The Naked Sun, Isaac Asimov (Fall 2011)
• Inferno, Dante Alighieri (Fall 2011) (I borrowed this from a friend, and plan on buying my own copy to read Purgatorio and Paradisio so I can amend this to say that I've read the entire Comedy)
• Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese (Spring 2012)

Popular Science

• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, PhD (Summer 2011)
• Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne, PhD (Summer 2011) 
• Physics of the Impossible, Michio Kaku, PhD (Summer 2011)
• A PhD Is Not Enough, Peter Feibleman, PhD (Summer 2011)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot (Fall 2011)
• Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins, Robert Hazen, PhD (Fall 2011)

For-Real Science

• On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin (Summer 2011) 
• Div, Grad, Curl, and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus, H. M. Schey, PhD (Fall 2011)
• Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution 2nd Ed, Drs. Graur and Li (Winter 2011-12)

History

• Democracy in America Volume I, Alexis de Tocqueville (Summer 2011) (I need to read Vol II)

Philosophy and Ethics

• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, PhD (Summer 2011)
• The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, PhD (Fall 2011)
• The Universe Next Door, James Sire, PhD (Winter 2011-12)
• Meditations on the First Philosophy, Rene Descartes (Winter 2011-12) (I've read this, and understand it on some level, but looking around I get the idea that I don't have a full grasp of the logic being used in it-- Cartesian Logic.  I'll have to return to it at a later time.) 
• God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens (Summer 2012)

Stuff That I've Started but Haven't Finished Yet (And Maybe Never Will)

• The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, PhD (Not entirely sure why I stopped reading this.  I should get back to it.)
• Molecular Cell Biology 6th edition, Drs. Lodish and Freeman (Read quite a bit of this for my Cell Biology Class.  I have to agree with many reviewers that, while it's informative, it's about as dry as the sands of Mars.  I'll keep it on my bookshelf for a reference, not for light reading.)
• Principles of Physical Biochemistry, Drs. van Holde, Johnson, and Ho (Not a terrible read, if you don't mind a lot of technical jargon.  I stopped reading it when I realized it had no bearing whatsoever on my Biophysics Course and the reading wasn't at all guided.  I'll gladly keep it around to keep brushing up in biophysics.)
• Molecular Driving Forces: Statistical Thermodynamics in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Nanoscience 2nd edition, Drs. Dill and Bromberg (This was actually much more helpful in my Biophys course, and gave me a good brief introduction to Thermodynamics.  I really should have spent more time on this text.  It might have helped me do more than barely scrape out a "B" in the course!)
• Fundamentals of Physics 7th edition, Drs. Halliday, Resnick, and Walker (I started working through this over the summer while re-teaching myself the first three semesters of Calculus.  I never had calculus-based physics, and this text was recommended as a great self-teaching tool.  I have to agree 100%!  I've only made it through the first ~1/3 of the book working the problems.  Graduate school *has* gotten in the way of me doing that.  Still, I'm keeping it around and tackling it the rare moments that I have time and the mood strikes me.  For the dedicated self-teacher, I recommend it.)