100 books like Free to Fly

Dr. Kalanithi’s memoir is surprisingly uplifting. A non-smoker, he was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic lung cancer in 2013. He was an American neurosurgeon, and his wife Lucy, an internal medicine doctor, is now a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford.

I find it brave that they decided to have a child in the midst of Paul’s treatment. Cady was eight months old when her father died in 2015 at the age of 37. His jargon-free writings from a doctor-patient point of view show they lived intentionally, finding joy and meaning, regardless of a terminal diagnosis. Medical training is based on empirical science; however, Paul’s despair caused him to return to the devout Christianity of his youth. He found its language better suited to grasping hope and love in human life. 

Noble Laureate Thomas Mann is known for his densely intellectual work. I enjoyed The Magic Mountain in a simpler way, though.

It’s pre-World War I, and I went along with German engineering student Hans Castorp to a tuberculosis sanitarium in the Swiss Alps. He’s there to visit his cousin but stays for seven years. There are crude medical treatments—with no magic bullets (antibiotics) to treat this contagious disease. In forced isolation, institutional order reduces chaos, and normal life goes on for most.

It’s ingenious how Mann creates a microcosm of the outside world through characters of different nationalities who engage in ideological conflicts! When Castorp leaves, having experienced romance and survived disease, I felt a spiritual transcendence; then, at last, Mann satisfies us with an ironic ending.   

Dr. Verghese, an African-born Indian internal medicine doctor, is famous for The Covenant of Water, selected by Oprah’s Book Club, but I am pulled back to his harrowing second book, The Tennis Partner. I enjoyed his gripping patient case histories while practicing in a Texas border town, but his focus is on his tennis games with his intern, David Smith, a former Australian tennis pro.

With each spirited rally, Verghese rebounds from life in the hospital and marital fatigue. While there is little talk of his unraveling marriage, I am intrigued by how their friendship deepens when they confide intimate details of their respective romances. I see Verghese’s strength of character as he moves on with his life, but things end badly for Smith, an alcohol and cocaine addict.

I knew Richard Selzer (1928-2016) for the last twenty-five years of his life, and I have read all of his 15 books. With 27 selections, The Doctor Stories is a good introductory volume.

I believed him to be a gentle soul, so I was shocked by his admission in "Brute" about a time when he was a tired resident working in the ER. He stitched a drunken patient’s earlobes to a gurney to hold him still while sewing up a laceration in his forehead; he smiled cruelly.

I now see how Selzer’s confession has influenced other doctors to break the code of silence and change their dehumanizing ways. It ushered in patient-centered, compassionate care that we all benefit from. Sometimes called “Baroque,” Selzer’s poetic language is my cup of tea. 

Hornbacher details her experience of living with bipolar disorder—the psychological escapades, the unimaginable highs, and devastating lows. These transcendent highs and crippling lows are mirrored in the strange delights and perils of the physical world. She is the life of parties, dressed provocatively in silky red dresses and matching ruby lipstick. But she is also capable of breaking ties with reality, hopping in a car with a boyfriend and travelling across the state for no reason in particular, an adventure in which the pleasure of the high becomes too much, too dangerous to be reckoned with. 

I too recall waking up at 2 am, writing for 18 hours straight, (without a water or pee break), and creating a beautiful essay in one draft which was later published. I once spent two days and nights in a blinding fury of elation that was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. I too remember in… show more.

This book parlays the author’s personal experience with bipolar disorder and mental illness and her experience as a clinician treating these conditions to describe the sometimes clinical roots of genius.

How "artistic temperament," as expressed in literature, music, and the visual arts, differs from the euphoric highs and desperate lows of full-blown psychiatric conditions is the very worthwhile question she passionately tries to answer with and for us.

Jamison writes about bipolar disorder as a professor of psychiatry and as a person who suffers from the illness. This dual vision allows us to see the disorder in multifaceted ways. Jamison is particularly adept at explaining why bipolar sufferers are so tragically prone to attempt and commit suicide. I suffer from Bipolar 2 Disorder with mixed features, meaning that I can be depressed and manic at the same time. This is a dangerous combination. A depressed person is more likely to have suicidal ideation and a manic person has enough energy to make suicidal plans and carry them out. Jamison's book is vital for me to understand and manage my suicidal ideation.

I loved this book because, while it is common for celebrities to write tell-all memoirs, it is not common for esteemed actresses to write so candidly about mental illness and sex addiction.

I was shocked when I read that Lewis was diagnosed as bipolar, and that is what led to a subsequent diagnosis of being a female sex addict. Reading her words and descriptions made me question if I, too, needed to seek out a psychiatrist to confirm if I was bipolar.

This book also helped me to see that there didn’t need to be shame attached to being a female sex addict, and I don’t have to be a celebrity to “tell it all.”

The thorns of Twain's personal life and literary career only heighten our intrigue with him. 

For me, he's a tragic figure whose parade of misfortunes interrupted by periods of commercial success and critical acclaim followed by further failures result in an exceptionally bipolar history. His classic novels should persist as required reading but I find his short stories equally satisfying.

This volume is voluminous, so here are some favorites to start: "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," "Was it Heaven? Or Hell?" and "Luck."

This book is a fascinating collection of academic articles and clinician perspectives. Does this sound dry? Okay, it’s a little dry, and I did have to look up big words like “iatrogenic” and “hypophagia.” But I have bipolar II, and there are very few books on this lesser-known bipolar variant. Bipolar II (in case you’re curious) is characterized by chronic depression and infrequent episodes of mild mania (known as “hypomania”). Fun facts I learned from this book: bipolar II is more common in women, and due to the severity and chronic nature of the depression, bipolar II can actually be more disabling than bipolar I. Wait, those might be sad facts. Oops.