From 2008 until 2017, I wrote (and have rewritten when appropriate) nearly 230 blog posts and 50 pages for our practice website, which I’d never expected would happen when I started writing a decade ago. At first, I did it out of necessity and not pleasure, but I discovered that I actually enjoyed it. However, in the last 2 years, as our practice has become busier, I haven’t had the energy to keep writing. In 2018, I decided to read more instead. Growing up, I was a huge bookworm and could lose myself in books for hours at a time. While I’d lost the passion for reading in the last few years, like many in the US, I made up for it in 2018, and I thought, “Why not share what I’ve read in 2018? Maybe others will find these books interesting, too.” With that, I present to you:
Dr. Charles Payet’s 2018 Reading
The list is neither in order, nor complete. I also re-read a bunch of old and much-loved books, such as the Foundation and Harry Potter series. What I think is important, however, is the range of topics covered by these books. As human knowledge expands at a mind-blowing rate, it is both more difficult and more important to keep up. We need to understand our past, present, and potential futures, science and technology, along with their intersections with history, ethics, morality, and more. Science fiction and fantasy, while not factual, often explores those topics in metaphors about the human condition, along with being good stories. The books written by experts on various topics help me stay up-to-date, and those stories are sometimes as intricate and extraordinary as the sci-fi/fantasy ones.
I have written a few book reviews here on the website, in case anyone is interested:
- The Gluten Lie: and Other Myths about Foods You Eat
- The Death of Expertise
- The Emperor of All Maladies: a Biography of Cancer
- Google Semantic Search (it’s about trust, so trust me, it’s oddly relevant to dentistry)
A Charlotte Dentist’s 2019 Reading List
If you’d like to see what else I’ve read and am reading, you can follow my Goodreads profile under my name, Charles Payet. 😀 I just stocked up on new books for 2019 at Barnes and Noble at the Arboretum the other night. My goal for 2019 is 2 books per month. That’s an average for the whole year, of course, as my ADHD means I’ll read in intense bursts of activity, with long pauses in between. Hopefully though, I’ll also find more time for writing.
Happy Reading!
