Reddit reviews Advanced Organic Chemistry, Part A: Structure and Mechanisms

Them, plus Janeway's Immunobiology, Carey and Sundberg's Advanced Organic Chemistry part A and part B, Anslyn's PhysOrg, Ptashne's A Genetic Switch, Gilbert's Developmental Biology, Fersht's Structure and Mechanism in Protein Science and the NEB Catalog form a reference shelf for Biochem/Chemical Biology that I don't suspect will need updating for another decade or two.

EDIT: Except, of course, for switching out the NEB catalog every year for the new edition.

If you read and understood all of EJ Corey's books, then I think you should be all set for grad school.

If you are really interested in more to read, try "Advanced Organic Chemistry" by Carey.

AOC - Part A

AOC - Part B

Best of luck!

Try part A of Carey & Sundberg, I highly recommend working each practice problem and reading the reference associated with each problem (there's a handy index in the back).

http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Organic-Chemistry-Part-Mechanisms/dp/0387683461/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419827941&sr=8-1&keywords=carey+sunberg

Several of the comments here have made me revisit my earlier studies and I'm going to quote straight out of my text to help clarify the issue:

"The factors that influence nucleophilicity are best assessed in the context of the limiting Sn2 mechanism, since it is here that the properties of the nucleophile are most important. the rate of an Sn2 reaction is directly related to the effectiveness of the nucleophile in displacing the leaving group. In contrast, the relative nucleophilicity has no effect on the rate of an Sn1 reaction.

Many properties have an influence on nucleophilicity. Those considered to be most significant are:

1. Solvation energy of the nucleophile
   
2. Strength of the bond being formed carbon
   
3. Size of the nucleophile
   
4. Electronegativity of the attacking atom
   
5. Polarizability of the attacking atom"
   
   There are explanations in the book for each of the 5 sections, if people found this helpful I can post those as well. The text is Advance Organic Chemistry, 4th ed. by Carey and Sundberg. The newer version is available here.