Incredible. Truly an all-time favorite read for me. It took me six months to get through the audiobook of this behemoth, but it was well-worth it. This book falls into a rare category for me; I love everything about it, but I also think that the critiques from other readers are totally fair.

The Emperor of All Maladies is many things, but a pop science book it is not. This is not a fun, quirky Mary Roach novel or an expansive, trippy exploration like Sagan's works on the universe. This is a meticulous, serious book and Mukherjee does not leave any detail left unshared.

I, a scientist working in biotech hoping to learn more about cancer, LOVED this aspect of the book. It's incredibly informative and I love that Mukherjee doesn't dumb things down for his audience. I learned so much from this book and spent hours on Wikipedia following up on this I wished he'd shared even more about! My favorite part was learning about how cancer therapies have evolved over the decades, especially with the advent of targeted therapies and the development of Trastuzumab. It felt like watching an action movie and your favorite superhero finally jumps into frame and saves the day. I am a super fan of recombinant proteins having an impact in the real world! I was also surprised to hear how much of the story of cancer takes place in Boston!

Despite how I absolutely devoured this novel, I can totally understand how this novel could be seen as overwhelming and inaccessible. Mukherjee doesn't skimp on his info-dumping - and for that I thank him - but I can totally imagine that this could come across as dry and lacking to someone who was looking for more of a narrative exploration of cancer and just wanted to pick up the main bullet points about oncology along the way.

I would definitely not recommend this book to anyone who isn't interested in doing a deep DEEP dive on cancer - its history, its pathology, and its treatments - over the span of 500 pages. This book feels like taking a summer crash course on cancer where a semester's worth of knowledge is crammed into two months and your professor is a brilliant oncologist who sometimes goes on long-winded, philosophical ramblings and quotes brainy literature at you before getting back to the nitty gritty on how the pap smear came about. Casual readers beware - this class will require a lot of your time and energy to get through!

Still, I loved it and I was so moved I hope to read another of Mukherjee's gigantic works this year. My only complaint is that it came out in 2010! I need an updated edition where Mukherjee talks about all things cell and gene therapies; a new, exciting, and kind of controversial type of cancer treatment.. I'm so curious to hear his take and hear their development through his lovely writing!

I have spent so many hours in New England forests before and after reading this book wondering what it must've been like to be here hundreds of years ago. This book is the closest answer I've found. It is a deeply profound portrayal of New England spanning centuries, a flip book focused on one plot of beautiful land and the stories that take place there.

North Woods is rare in that the story follows not a character, but a setting: Western Massachusetts, one of the most beautiful parts of the state. So many compelling characters are introduced in striking vignettes that stretch over hundreds of years. It's hard to pick favorites, they were all so incredible, but the last vignette in this book deeply touched me.

Mason must've spent a lot of an enormous amount of time researching this book. So many hyper local New England details take center stage in North Woods: heirloom apples, the Merino Craze of the early 19th century, Dutch Elm disease decimating forests, the trend of spiritualism, and so much more across the region's several hundred year history that the book explores.

This book is for anyone who loves New England or wants to read some really stunning, compelling, faintly connected short stories that take place there.

I think I actually regret reading this book. To be clear, I did not go into this book with the intention to hate read it. My friend and I had celebrated Halloween by watching a re-showing of Twilight in theaters (incredible experience) and she lent me her copy of Midnight Sun after learning that I had never read it. She'd told me that it was awful, but coming off the high of seeing Twilight in theaters for the first time, I was genuinely excited to read it.

Twilight got me back into reading when I was entering middle school. I remember borrowing the books from friends at school and staying up all night reading them to give them back the next day. I loved the series! Yes, they're not particularly well-written and a tad problematic at times but there's a reason why they were and continue to be so popular. They're fun to read!

Especially when you're an angsty tween coming of age - it's wish fulfillment at its finest. Even as an adult woman, they're still fun to revisit for the same reason. It's still fun to detach from reality and pop back into Bella's story from time to time, even if it isn't quite as immersive and compelling to me as it was to my younger self.

My issue with Midnight Sun is that it had all the worst parts of the original Twilight series with none of the good parts. Meyer's questionable writing and even more questionable portrayal of romantic relationships were on full display, but the story stopped being fun - mostly because Edward's POV is insufferable.

From Bella's perspective, Twilight is about the magic of falling in love for the first time, of terrifying but thrilling discoveries, and of finally becoming the main character in your own life. From Edward's perspective, Twilight is about obsession and the self-loathing and anxiety that come from being unable to stop yourself from stooping to ever lower lows. It's not fun to read at best, and honestly a bit disturbing at worst.

Edward comes out as a full-fledged stalker in this book. This is already pretty heavily hinted at in the books and movies, but I feel like it's as tastefully done as something like this can be. In Midnight Sun, Edward starts watching Bella sleep SO early in the book. Basically after they first meet. If that's not bad enough, we also learn that he effectively uses his mind reading to stalk her all day through the thoughts of others?! Absolutely insane.

The book suffers from the fact that it's the same exact plot as Twilight just worse because of Edward's perspective. It's not as thrilling as Bella's - we already know his secret - and not as fun to read about. We do get some new information about the Cullens which I appreciate, but I would've much rather just picked that up in a guide book to the series or read it online.

Accepting that this is what Edward's inner thoughts were like during all his brooding, silent moments would actually ruin the series for me so I'm just going to pretend like this book isn't canon and is some horribly written fanfiction by a misguided, but good-intentioned horny teen.

Tread carefully with picking this one up! I opened Pandora's box with this one and am regretting it a little.