Lessons in Taxidermy

By Bee Lavender,

Book cover of Lessons in Taxidermy: A Compendium of Safety and Danger

Book description

Diagnosed with cancer at age twelve and perilously pregnant at eighteen, surviving surgeries and violent accidents: sometimes you can't believe Bee Lavender is still alive; sometimes you think nothing could kill her. Bee Lavender holds nothing back as she recounts her life spent in and out of hospitals and her…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Lessons in Taxidermy as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is the first book where I read about experiences of childhood illness similar to my own. Reading it was both shocking and deeply cathartic in a way that felt almost dangerous. It is also a cold hard look at class, age, and intergenerational trauma in relation to health and healthcare in the US. It exists in its own category in my mind. All I can say is read it, just not on a bad pain day. 

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Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

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Interested in taxidermy, chronic illness, and aesthetics?

Taxidermy 9 books
Chronic Illness 23 books
Aesthetics 68 books