Reading List: October 2024

Everything I'm reading in the month of October

• Heart: A History, by Sandeep Jauhar: This book is about the history of the heart. It covers the heart's place in our mind as both a physical and spiritual organ, and how the field of cardiology has evolved in its treatment of it.
  
  I read a lot medical non-fiction books. It's one of my favorite categories, because the history and content is so fascinating. Books about medicine and physiology also give me a tremendous appreciation to live in the period of time that we do, with access to the best medical care humanity has ever known.
• Endurance: Shackelton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing: I'm only a chapter into this book, but it's off to a promising start (from a reader entertainment point of view).
  
  The book is about Sir Ernest Shackelton, his crew, and their doomed ship, the Endurance. Sailing the Antarctic, the ship would be destroyed by crushing ice, and the crew left to fend for themselves on a desolate plane of frozen water.
  
  Spoiler alert: they actually survive, but I don't know how yet. I guess I'll find out. It's supposed to be a thrilling tale.
• Deep Nutrition, by Catherine Shanahan, MD: Got the itch to read a nutrition book again.
  
  I go back and forth on getting into nutrition literature. For new readers, my undergraduate degree was in Nutrition and Dietetics, and it was once a deeply held passion of mine. But my interest in it has waned over the years, and I've found it difficult at times to engage seriously with any material on it.
  
  That's not to say that I don't take nutrition seriously; I still eat a healthy diet and take great care to make sure I'm getting proper nutrition. In many ways, I follow a rigorously healthy diet, although it doesn't feel that way to me since I've been doing it for so long.
  
  I also find a lot of nutrition discourse to be tiresome (I.e., "carnivore vs vegan", "seed oils will kill you!!", and "ancestral nutrition") and the big personalities in the field to be grating. Tribalism runs rampant, and this was a big part of why I became dissuaded with the idea a career in nutrition.
  
  But every now and then, I get interested again in what people are talking about when it comes to nutrition. So, I picked up this book, which I've seen recommended by a lot of people I respect who have an interest in nutrition.