Reddit mentions of Differential Equations with Applications and Historical Notes, 2nd Edition (International Series in Pure and Applied Mathematics)

Oh sorry, I forgot to reply to you. There's two textbooks I typically reference for ODEs that will be more than sufficient by the sounds of it.

There is Braun - Differential Equations and their Applications. The author tries to motivate each problem by going to some interesting applications. I think he fails in this as the applications are quite standard at the end of the day, he just goes into more detail to give the context. But the book is overall great and quite well explained.

The other one is kind of tough to track down as it seems to be out of print now Differential Equations with applications and historical notes by Simmons. Again the book has a bit of a gimmick where it puts each of the big contributors, and methods, in historical context. It's an excellent resource I find, it gets pretty in depth on Laplace transforms.

It's really your call which one you go with, if you have some extra time once you make it through your course content I would recommend taking a look at the sections on qualitative theory, systems of ODEs, and numerical methods. Those topics are both fascinating and I think tend to have more active work associated with them.

This was the least dry math book (or Visual Complex Analysis, maybe) I used as an undergrad,

http://www.amazon.com/Differential-Applications-Historical-International-Mathematics/dp/0070575401

Really well balanced. Loved it. From the introduction,
> This book is constructed so that each chapter except the last has at least one major "payoff" -- and often several -- in the form of a classic scientific problem which the methods of that chapter render accessible.

I think it really delivers on that promise. I noticed the amazon page doesn't let you "look inside" (a shame) -- let me know if you have any questions. I still have my copy.