u/Ohthatsnotgood

There are 44 authors featured in TrueLit’s Hall of Fame + Top 40:

• English (27): Melville, Joyce, Shakespeare, Pynchon, McCarthy, Steinbeck, Wallace, Nabokov, Williams, Eliot, Woolf, Morrison, Gaddis, Faulkner, E. Brontë, Ishiguro, Austen, Shelley, Heller, Baldwin, du Maurier, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, C. Brontë, Plath, Le Guin, & DeLillo
• Spanish (4): Borges, Márquez, Bolaño, & Cervantes
• Russian (3): Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, & Bulgakov
• French (2): Proust & Dumas
• German (2): Mann & Sebald
• Italian (1): Calvino
• Hungarian (1): Krasznahorkai
• Norwegian (1): Fosse 
• Portuguese (1): Pessoa
• Romanian (1): Cărtărescu
• Ancient Greek (1): Homer

It is the subject of complaint every year that the majority are male, wrote in English in the U.S. and U.K., and/or are represented by narrative prose fiction.

Notably none of those authors wrote in Africa, Asia, or Oceania or wrote in languages like Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Latin, and Sanskrit. Rich traditions like Spanish, French, German, and Russian are also only represented by a few books. Many great playwrights and poets are also not present.

Now is your chance to promote alternatives that you think everyone should read. Please give in-depth answers instead of just plain lists. Thank you.

Guidelines:

• Only recommend books written in English if they apply to one of these criteria:
  • A play, a collection of poems, or a collection of short stories
  • Written in a country other than the U.S. & U.K. 
  • Written by a woman
• You may recommend non-English books that you read in the original language but consider that the majority will judge them based on their translation(s).
• Only recommend books you think deserve to be considered amongst the absolute greatest ever

Backstory:
I am 26 years old and dropped out of Mechanical Engineering years ago because I was uncertain with my career path and dealing with stress due to the pandemic and my father’s worsening condition. Now I feel that I have truly “woken up” and need to stop thinking in circles and start taking action otherwise I’ll be even more regretful of my life decisions in the future.

For some reason it never really occurred to me, despite many of my family being in the medical field, that I should consider medicine as I find the body fascinating and love helping others. I know it’ll be extremely stressful and I know it’s not how it’s romanticized but that is just a reality of life.

So I need your help to educate me on what it is I should be doing immediately and in the future if I intend on putting all my effort behind this.

1. What is the best bachelor’s degree for me to pursue? Biology, Biochemistry, and Neuroscience seem to be the most common answers. I already have an Associate of Arts so I’ll be starting later courses.

2. When should I start studying for the MCAT? My final year of university?

3. What should I start doing to build my application? Can I start volunteering immediately?

4. What other details are important for me to know?

Thank you.