Summer Reading

Well, I quit book club after how many years?  How many awful books?  And have dedicated myself to read books by the pound.  Started with The Emperor of Maladies.  Loved it.  For anyone who has plowed through most of these postings, I do like reading about the history of scientific discoveries, primarily those related to the field of biology.  Reading about all the brilliant, curious, never-give-up scientists and dedicated oncologists researching and treating cancers was inspiring and made me delve deeply into an assessment of whether I would have ever had the patience, diligence, almost compulsion to take up those kinds of careers.  I marvel at their brilliance and as as importantly, I marvel at how well Siddhartha writes.  People with a similar ability to simplify but yet intrigue young minds to science is what is needed in education today, not a brand commercial for STEM.

Towards the end of the book where Siddhartha gets into the cellular chemistry of the diseases I almost felt like Alice in Wonderland, displaced by how minute the triggers and remedies could  be.  Looking for a suitable analogy, I felt my mind could only wrap around 1,000 pieces of a jig saw puzzle.  But shortly, I credited myself with zeroing in on the features of each of the 1,000 pieces ... their "ins and outs," their nuanced colors, any latent patterns in placing them across a vertical or horizontal cut.  I still don't think I could ever be a biochemist though.

Of course you can't read a book like this disinterestedly if you are a cancer "survivor" or currently know people undergoing treatment.  At least the science had reached an acceptable level of attack when I first had cancer in 2001.  Reading about the discovery of tamoxifin and Taxol was reassuring; reading about the various nuances of leukemia grounded me a bit more in my friends symptoms, from the disease as well as the medications.

As a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, I guess I am late to reading such a good book.  I planned on giving my paperback copy to one of my team whose mother was being operated on last week but she had bought a copy.  And of course, when I mentioned it to my older son, he had not only read it but watched the PBS adaptation.  (Is there anything he hasn't read?)

So on to my next hefty volume, Chernow's Alexander Hamilton.  If I can't get Broadway tickets, I'll read the "libretto."