Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Tak Ada Peluru Ajaib / There is No Magic Bullet

Kanker, Biografi Suatu Penyakit by Siddharta Mukherjee; Rahmat Purwono 

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(The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer) It’s now edging onto the last part of the year, and I want to mention my most significant (read: stupid) reading challenge. I had some downtime in Australia earlier this year, and I told myself I was going to try to read something in Indonesian again. That something turned out to be an Indonesian translation of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Or Kanker: Biografi Suatu Penyakit (Cancer: Biography of a Disease). Why this […]

For a long time I had tried to belong in America, wanted and wished for it more than anything, but in that moment all I wanted was to be accepted as a Korean by two people who refused to claim me.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

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“Mom’s afraid you two will fight if you come,” my father admitted later. “She knows she has to put all her focus into getting better.” I assumed the seven years I’d lived away from home had healed the wounds between us, that the strain built up in my teenage years had been forgotten. Now we were closer than ever, but my father’s admission revealed there were memories of which my mother could not let go.” ― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart “Sweet braised black […]

Great Book—But Still Not Pleased With The Outcome.

The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA by Jorge L. Contreras

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I love a good turn of narrative non-fiction. Back in the early years of my PhD—which was in genetics—the topic of gene ownership and gene patents was a huge deal. If you were working in the field, there was no way you could have avoided getting dragged into the discussion; whether you were hearing about it from a medical perspective, an agricultural perspective or a ‘shit, I was broke doing my degree all those years ago so you’ll never guess what I did*’ perspective, you […]

A Subject With Many Facets

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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Damn, sometimes you come across an author who’s skills you envy so much it hurts. Siddhartha Mukherjee is absolutely one of these authors. I wish I could communicate the intracies of biology in the way Mukherjee does, while keeping it both interesting and easy to digest. I sometimes struggle to do this in person, but in writing? It’s a daunting task.  Both of Mukherjee’s previous books— The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer; and The Gene: An Intimate History—are both excellent books that […]

A very emotional read

Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story by Catherine Pioli

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Author and illustrator Catherine Pioli chronicled her journey as a leukemia patient in Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story. At first, I thought it would be some “sad sack poor me” story. I was wonderfully surprised it was nothing like that. I wasn’t halfway through this graphic novel (reading a reader copy online through Edelweiss) before I know it was going to be a five. And unless some huge middle finger happened it would stay a five for the sheer power of it. Instead, […]

Oh Olive…

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

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I picked this up because it kept coming up in CBR14 reviews. After researching it a little bit, it seems that it is hugely popular. I was intrigued to find out what made it more than the average romcom-type romance. Plus I was very curious to find out whatever it has to do with ReyLo. Olive, a struggling biology grad student, kisses a random guy in her lab, her intent being to show her best friend that she has completely moved on from her ex […]



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