Toshi is ed a biography of cancer

Every year there's always one non-fiction book that the entire literate world raves about and that I hate. In it was Richard Holmes's "The Age of Wonder", the following year it was "The Emperor of All Maladies".

Universally admired, winner of a Pulitzer prize, this book annoyed me so profoundly when I first read it that I've had to wait almost a year to be able to write anything vaguely coherent about it.

The flaws that I found so infuriating a year ago seem less important upon a second reading. Though I still think it is a poorly conceived book, executed in a manner that lacks all restraint, it's nowhere near as terrible as I remembered.

Cancer biology faculty

As I recall, the aspects of the book that most annoyed me were:

(a) the author's anthropomorphism of cancer -- a stupid, unhelpful, and ineffective metaphor. In general, I detest this practice of attributing personalities to diseases.

Perhaps it's a necessary psychological strat