Why I Read... Nonfiction

If you know me very well at all, you probably know that I had a really hard time deciding what to study in college (evidenced by the fact that I am now on my sixth year of undergraduate study. Fortunately now I have one bachelor's degree to my name). I toyed with piano, sociology, French, English, and psychology before settling down with neuroscience with the hopes of going to pharmacy school when I was done. After several circumstances led me to the decision that pharmacy school was not going to be the right choice for me, I finished up my neuroscience degree and started a second degree accelerated bachelor's in nursing, which is where I am now. The jury's still out on whether or not I'll actually ever get a real job.

The reason I am telling you all of this is because I love to learn. Nearly every subject interests me (except accounting... sorry, Mom) and I used to think that if I had the money, I would just go to school forever (I am learning now that isn't true... six years of undergraduate work has finally burned me out and I can't wait to be done with school). So nonfiction is an obvious choice for me -- reading a nonfiction book is like taking a crash course in any subject you want.

With that said, I haven't been reading that much nonfiction lately. There are two reasons for this -- first of all, nonfiction is hard to read. I don't like to read it all at once, in general, because I feel like if I read it too quickly, I forget everything I learn and don't retain anything. Secondly, I am on the nonfiction panel for the Indie Lit Awards and I don't want to burn out on nonfiction by reading too much of it before I need to read the five finalists next year. Nonfiction books tend to be pretty thick and I know I will be reading a high volume come January, so I want to have the brain space ready for it. However, don't think that means I don't love it.

Why I Read Nonfiction

* Learning. I've loved to learn new things my entire life, and reading nonfiction allows me to learn things that are outside of my normal field of study.

* True stories. In the case of histories, biographies and memoirs, we get the chance to see inside of people's lives. I love learning about things that have really happened -- that realization that someone really felt the emotions I am experiencing as I read about it. Even when I was a little girl I remember being most excited by movies that were "based on a true story."

* Feel-good factor. No, I'm not talking about warm fuzzies, although I certainly have gotten those from certain memoirs and religious nonfiction. What I mean is that I get to feel good about myself for taking it upon myself to read something difficult and also intellectually edifying.

Recommendations

* Anything by Oliver Sacks. While in general I've just read excerpts from his books, I can confidently say that anything you read by this fantastic neuroscientist will be readable and informative. Sacks takes the very strangest of cases and presents them with factual but comprehensible information that appeals to the general public.

* John Adams by David McCullough. This biography is a hefty beast, and I remember reading it on the treadmill, hoping that it would stay open and not fall on my foot. It is a fascinating look into the life of a man I knew next to nothing about. John Adams has become one of my heroes from this book, and I really want to name one of my children Abigail after his wife (The Husband is vetoing that, for now). This book was compulsively readable despite its length. 

* The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. This comprehensive look at the way perceptions and treatments of cancer have evolved through the centuries is sensitive and compelling.

* Into the Wild by John Krakauer. This is a book I severely need to reread. Krakauer drives into the psyche of Chris McCandless, a strange teenager that decides to live alone in Alaska and ultimately dies of exposure. The writing is penetrating and the story moving.

For more recommendations, visit...

Sophisticated Dorkiness. There is a reason Kim keeps winning Best Nonfiction blog for BBAW. She covers a wide variety of nonfiction genres, and her writing is excellent.

The Blue Bookcase. The ladies of The Blue Bookcase don't focus on nonfiction, but in reading their blog for a year I have found many interesting recommendations. 

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Title: The Emperor of All Maladies
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D.
Publisher: Scribner, 2010
Genre: Nonfiction
Source: Gift from The Husband

(I'm trying to be a little more organized, hence the abundance of information above)

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee is subtitled "A Biography of Cancer." The book attempts, then, to describe the cancer from its birth to its death, a multidimensional canvas that includes its history, its pathogenesis in the human body, and its range of treatment. Mukherjee adds to this broad scope of information his personal experiences with patients as a student doctor in an oncology fellowship. The result is a vast, information-filled tome of knowledge about this unruly, capricious disease.

Mukherjee's writing leaps around a bit, describing ancient tumors found on mummies, pathologies inscribed on ancient tablets (treatment: none, marked drearily on one), and then snapping into his beginning experiences as an oncologist. The main chronological thread is that of the discovery of ways to treat cancers, beginning with simple excision of a tumor and leading to the complicated and elegant array of gene therapies pharmaceutical companies are marketing today. While this main thread was followed throughout the novel, it was at times a little disorienting to jump from learning about a developing drug in the 40's to Dr. Mukherjee's current patient in the 21st century.

The book tended to focus on a few specific types of cancer, including Hodgkin's disease, breast cancer, and especially the leukemias. I understand his reason for this, as these particular cancers, possibly because of their uniqueness, led to specific cancer treatments. However, I would have liked to learn more about other cancers as well, such as skin cancer, colon and stomach cancer, and especially brain cancer. Mukherjee's main focus was on the development of treatment and government funding for research, while I personally would have been more interested in learning the biological details of the different diseases. However, through elucidating the development of different treatments, Dr. Mukherjee deftly pulls together the common causes of different cancers into a concise and uncomplicated genetic explanation.

Despite my occasional disappointment in the type of information presented, this book is a stunning accomplishment. Cancer is a diverse and elusive disease with behavior that still baffles some of the most intelligent people in the world. I loved Dr. Mukherjee's characterization of cancer as an alien opponent maneuvering its way through battles with the human body - its amazing adaptations to treatments and the way it harnesses the life-promoting ability of dividing cells is eerie and frightening. The range of information and research necessary to write a book like this is astounding, and despite the occasionally scattered narrative, I think Mukherjee did as good a job as anyone could in integrating the story elements.

Dr. Mukherjee's personal stories also give this intimidating and huge volume a personal touch. He describes the heaviness of his cancer fellowship, the way it changed his life and the lives of the doctors with whom he worked. He describes his feelings of defeat when he has to tell a cancer patient they really have no more options, and the delicate balance the doctor must tread in displaying hope for a treatment but not too much hope. I was especially touched by his story of driving to his leukemia patient, Carla's, home to bring her flowers when she was officially in remission. Dr. Mukherjee is not just a scholar, intent on discovering the root of a medical problem - he is a soldier struggling to protect the lives of those caught in the snare of a formidable enemy.

Dr. Mukherjee is also an excellent writer. His prose was never too thick with medical terms. He crafts his sentences well, clarifying complicated scientific processes with elegant metaphors. One such metaphor compares science as unveiling a picture one small piece at a time, until it resolves into a complete picture -

Science is often described as an iterative and cumulative process, a puzzle solved piece by piece, with each piece contributing a few hazy pixels of a much larger picture. But the arrival of a truly powerful new theory in science often feels far from iterative. Rather than explain one observation or phenomenon in a single, pixelated step, an entire field of observations suddenly seems to crystallize into a perfect whole. The effect is almost like watching a puzzle solve itself.

Overall, I think this book is a daunting read, but a worthy one. I think in our lifetimes cancer will affect all of us, whether from the disease in our own bodies or that of a loved one. While our understanding of the disease is far from complete, The Emperor of All Maladies gives us a small window of understanding. It is not a perfect portrait of this complicated enemy of ours, but may be one of the best we have so far.

Overall Rating: 4


Neuroscience Notes: While the book didn't spend much time describing cancers of the brain, there were a few interesting anecdotes about certain cancers metastasizing to the cranial cavity, causing intense headaches, hallucinations, etc. For this reason, I am including it in my neuroscience list.

Read for the Chunkster Challenge and the South Asian Challenge.

Literary Hop: Nonfiction

This week's literary blog hop poses the question

Is there such a thing as literary non-fiction? If so, how do you define it? Examples?

I have been excited to answer this question since I read it this morning. I love nonfiction. And I would say that much of it is literary.

Consider this quote by Ramon y Cajal, a pioneer in neuroscience (he diagrammed these beautiful dendritic processes from what he observed under his microscope)

"What mysterious forces precede the appearance of these processes... promote their growth and ramification... and finally establish those protoplasmic kisses... which seem to constitute the final ecstasy in an epic love story." (quoted from Kandel's Principles of Neural Science, pg. 1068). (This is in reference to neuronal processes finding their synapses)

In general I wouldn't consider a neuro textbook to be literary (try reading one of those things), but I love that quote and I think it demonstrates that literariness, in the sense defined on The Blue Bookcase (basically, demonstrating aesthetics and not simply entertainment or information) can appear in unexpected places.

But moving on from that, I have read many nonfiction books that are literary (and a few that are not... I am specifically remembering Charlotte Church's autobiography, Voice of an Angel). One of the first nonfiction books I read for pleasure was a collection of essays by Joan Didion that I found in my AP English teacher's bookshelf in high school (the same teacher of "abandon hope all ye who enter here"). I don't even remember the title of the book, and I can't find the cover on Amazon. However, I remember being moved by the poignancy of her writing and the people she described. Many of the essays described drug dens, poverty, hippies, things I hadn't encountered in my small, conservative, well-off town. She pulled me into that world with words that I would never have experienced otherwise, and it was all the more moving for me because it was true.

Currently I am reading a biography of John Adams. (It was due yesterday, so hopefully I will have it finished and reviewed in the next few days). Not all biographies are literary or enjoyable. I have very little patience for the ones that are so stuffed with facts and dates that everything begins to run together. However, this biography reads almost like a novel, not because the writer sensationalizes or invents but because John Adams' life is written with skill. McCullough, the writer, does not simply relay facts - he illustrates, brings to life, illuminates. He presents the facts in a way that makes me feel as if he were telling me conversationally about his grandfather. This is probably why McCullough has won the Pulitzer for another of his books, Truman.

There are several non-fiction books I am hoping to read soon. The number one on my list is The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It is about cancer - its history, treatments, and people whose lives have been affected by it. I read a glowing review of it yesterday which made me even more excited to read it. Hopefully I will get my hands on it soon!

What about you? Do you like nonfiction? What do you like/dislike about it?

The literary blog hop is hosted by The Blue Bookcase. Thanks for a great prompt this week!