Reddit reviews Organic Chemistry

My main hobby is reading textbooks, so I decided to go beyond the scope of the question posed. I took a look at what I have on my shelves in order to recommend particularly good or standard books that I think could characterize large portions of an undergraduate degree and perhaps the beginnings of a graduate degree in the main fields that interest me, plus some personal favorites.

Neuroscience: Theoretical Neuroscience is a good book for the field of that name, though it does require background knowledge in neuroscience (for which, as others mentioned, Kandel's text is excellent, not to mention that it alone can cover the majority of an undergraduate degree in neuroscience if corequisite classes such as biology and chemistry are momentarily ignored) and in differential equations. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology were used in my classes on cognition and learning/memory and I enjoyed both; though they tend to choose breadth over depth, all references are research papers and thus one can easily choose to go more in depth in any relevant topics by consulting these books' bibliographies.

General chemistry, organic chemistry/synthesis: I liked Linus Pauling's General Chemistry more than whatever my school gave us for general chemistry. I liked this undergraduate organic chemistry book, though I should say that I have little exposure to other organic chemistry books, and I found Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis to be very informative and useful. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take instrumental/analytical/inorganic/physical chemistry and so have no idea what to recommend there.

Biochemistry: Lehninger is the standard text, though it's rather expensive. I have limited exposure here.

Mathematics: When I was younger (i.e. before having learned calculus), I found the four-volume The World of Mathematics great for introducing me to a lot of new concepts and branches of mathematics and for inspiring interest; I would strongly recommend this collection to anyone interested in mathematics and especially to people considering choosing to major in math as an undergrad. I found the trio of Spivak's Calculus (which Amazon says is now unfortunately out of print), Stewart's Calculus (standard text), and Kline's Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach to be a good combination of rigor, practical application, and physical intuition, respectively, for calculus. My school used Marsden and Hoffman's Elementary Classical Analysis for introductory analysis (which is the field that develops and proves the calculus taught in high school), but I liked Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis (nicknamed "Baby Rudin") better. I haven't worked my way though Munkres' Topology yet, but it's great so far and is often recommended as a standard beginning toplogy text. I haven't found books on differential equations or on linear algebra that I've really liked. I randomly came across Quine's Set Theory and its Logic, which I thought was an excellent introduction to set theory. Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica is a very famous text, but I haven't gotten hold of a copy yet. Lang's Algebra is an excellent abstract algebra textbook, though it's rather sophisticated and I've gotten through only a small portion of it as I don't plan on getting a PhD in that subject.

Computer Science: For artificial intelligence and related areas, Russell and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach's text is a standard and good text, and I also liked Introduction to Information Retrieval (which is available online by chapter and entirely). For processor design, I found Computer Organization and Design to be a good introduction. I don't have any recommendations for specific programming languages as I find self-teaching to be most important there, nor do I know of any data structures books that I found to be memorable (not that I've really looked, given the wealth of information online). Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is considered to be a gold standard text for algorithms, but I haven't secured a copy yet.

Physics: For basic undergraduate physics (mechanics, e&m, and a smattering of other subjects), I liked Fundamentals of Physics. I liked Rindler's Essential Relativity and Messiah's Quantum Mechanics much better than whatever books my school used. I appreciated the exposition and style of Rindler's text. I understand that some of the later chapters of Messiah's text are now obsolete, but the rest of the book is good enough for you to not need to reference many other books. I have little exposure to books on other areas of physics and am sure that there are many others in this subreddit that can give excellent recommendations.

Other: I liked Early Theories of the Universe to be good light historical reading. I also think that everyone should read Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

I found that Clayden was an excellent resource to learn organic chemistry and get an intuition/deeper understanding of why reactions proceed in the directions that they do. I did not find the typical textbooks that are used in classes, such as Organic Chemistry by Bruice to be nearly as useful, as the emphasis was on covering a wide range of reactions and not focusing on what they have in common.

I would not recommend one of the classic higher-level bibles, such as March's Advanced Organic Chemistry to you at this stage.

If you plan on continuing to study organic chemistry after this first course, I would recommend that you take a good course (or multiple courses) in physical organic chemistry. You will develop a much better understanding of reaction mechanisms and chemical kinetics if you do. Good texts for this field are Carey and Sundberg's Advanced Organic Chemistry Parts A and B, and Anslyn and Dougherty's Modern Physical Organic Chemistry.

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Jonathan-Clayden/dp/0198503466

Clayden, Greeves, Warren, and Wothers Organic Chemistry

I'm a second year Grad Student and this is still one of the best I've read for reference or for learning source.

The general textbook I use is Clayden and I've found it really comprehensive - it weighs (and costed) something awful, but there you go.

For specific topics, I use a variety of smaller primers - generally textbooks that use a programmed approach, as that's what suits my learning style.

The keys to chemistry are mostly understanding chemistry. Get him an organic chemistry book; most of it will be over his head right now, but as he grows intellectually he'll be able to conquer more and more. It can't really hurt to have around anyway. My favorite is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198503466/organischeche-20

For organic chemistry, this was my textbook:
http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Jonathan-Clayden/dp/0198503466/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372758866&sr=1-2&keywords=clayden+organic+chemistry
(There's a newer edition available now, but you can get this one used for about $11)

It's a pretty awesome book. Explains degree level organic chemistry very clearly. Iirc, it covers the basic chemistry concepts you'd need to understand as well, such as orbital structures etc.

This book was fantastic for organic chemistry when I was in undergrad. Really well explained and detailed. Don't buy it new!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0198503466

Phys chem I used was Atkins Physical Chemistry, but I wouldn't rave about that as much.

I used Clayden/Greeves/Warren/Wothers to study for my final tests. I loved it. Looks like I'm not the only one taken by that book.

Thanks a lot for the reply!

Well, that's my biggest concern so far. I understand that I need practice, but finding a lab will be challenging(no community colleges, not in the US).
But, there is some spare money, and maybe I could set up some lab practice at home with decent preparations? Found a lot of chem kits, but seems like all of them are for children(and inorganic chem).

Also I got myself this book - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Organic-Chemistry-Jonathan-Clayden/dp/0198503466 , would you recommend it?

EDIT: About lab practice, maybe there is some virtual lab programs? I fully realise it's not the same as real lab, but maybe it will help at first. Practicing while learning programming was so easier, heh.

I didn't do CHM136/138 here, but I did do a fuck ton of organic chem at another university before I came here.

The key is to understanding how everything operates. If you memorize anything, you are fucked. The book we used for the classes was this and it gave me a fair amount of practice. It's probably overkill for what you want, but all the other organic chem textbooks just approached things by more memorization.

When I focused on drawing my reaction mechanisms right and pushing electrons/bonds around properly, knowing pKa's, and doing tons of examples to make sure that things make sense.

However the CHM138 exams look very vicious for a first year course, on par with UofT I guess (or my old uni was shit). I did a third year course at another university and only that covered some of the stuff on there, and it seems to borrow on some of the topics from there.

For example, if you have 2-chloro-2-methypropane and you add water/EtOH (based on the exam question), would H2O attack? Would it take off a proton on one of the CH3's and eliminate it? Would it then attack? Or would the slight acidity of EtOH do something else?

It's been a while since I've done this but you should understand why things happen. When you do, there's not much else that can stop you. One key is to make sure that you ask (when you get the answer) is why other things don't happen. If you don't ask why SN reactions don't happen over E1/E2 reactions, you might end up costing yourself half the understanding.

Regardless, I say wait until someone who has done that course responds, but this is what I found worked for me when I did orgchem.

Although not chemistry per se right hand, left hand (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Right-Hand-Left-Chris-McManus/dp/0753813556) was recommended to us by our organic chemistry lecturer (Clayden, the guy who wrote co-authored http://www.amazon.co.uk/Organic-Chemistry-Jonathan-Clayden/dp/0198503466/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370533504&sr=1-1&keywords=clayden+organic+chemistry)

Edit: Also there is a chemistry section within Bill Brysons short history of nearly everything, and tbh if you have any general interest in science then you should read this book anyway as it covers loads of topics throughout the history of science really well and its very accessable