Cancer is a disease that most of us bumble through the world caring little about until we encounter it for the first time. I don’t mean in textbooks or television commercials but in a fellow human being. Once it affects someone you love, you see it everywhere, an unseen force that Won’t Stop Taking Lives.
I was lucky. My family’s experience with cancer, which has been quite personal, was tame compared to what it could have been, to what I know it can do and how quickly and unfairly it can kill. I’ve seen it reduce people to shells in a matter of months, robbing wives of husbands and sons of mothers. Not that something else, like a car accident, makes any sort of sense either, but cancer is a cruel sickness: what’s ruining a person’s life is life itself — cells that grow in a way they shouldn’t.
So first, The Fault in Our Stars is a coming-of-age novel. Secondly, it’s about cancer. And also love. Someone’s going to die, and you’re probably going to cry.
Continue reading “Our tragic flaws: a review of The Fault in Our Stars”
My sister got me The Underwater Welder for Christmas, which I’ve been excited to read. Jeff Lemire is an amazing writer and artist. I’ll have my review posted in a couple hours (11 a.m. EST) at 
I’m really excited to start reading The Casual Vacancy, my book club selection for February. Whooo! By the way, is that book expensive or what? I have all of J.K. Rowling’s major books in hardcover, so I wanted this one to complete my collection. But holy cow — $35? I picked mine up for $24, but still, that’s ridiculous. Good thing I had a gift card.
