The most recommended cancer books

I’m an eternal pessimist. My cup is always half-empty and I imagine the worst. Not at all helpful when you’ve had cancer three times.

But one day at a medical conference I heard Andy Cope speak and he blew my mind. I can choose to wake up as excited as a five-year-old. I want people to talk about me behind my back for all the joy I bring to their lives and I don’t to waste the precious time I have left being miserable.

Some days it’s hard and I’ll be honest, I do quite like wallowing in misery from time to time, but this book always snaps me out of it

What a wonderful, moral-rich, non-preachy, feel-good, tapped several of the big societal issues (adultery, death, divorce, pride, bullying, regret, work vs. family; you get the point), without ever once making me squirm with too many religious overtones, or want to run off to confess my improprieties. As a flower child at heart, I loved the continual nuances of people and growth compared to good soil and water, seasons, and blooms. This book was beautifully done.

When the matriarch of a loving family is diagnosed with cancer and determined to live out her days without treatment, there are twists and turns of reality that make this book a must-read. I too, nearly chose the path of non-treatment and this book resonates.

Well done, Julie Cantrell!

Lisa’s husband dies as he is being treated for cancer. She writes about the first year after in which grief, madness, confusion, isolation, and fury coincide with Britain’s beginning Brexit madness. Nothing can be made sense of and yet we need words to express what’s happening. And then words provide for consoling and managing.

Radical Remission was my go-to healing guide when faced with cancer.

What impressed me most about Dr. Kelly Turner is her ability to connect the dots and realize that spontaneous remission wasn’t actually spontaneous. She did extensive research to determine the 9 key factors that help people heal from cancer (and they are not what you might think).

This is a must-have for all resource libraries. I’m also deeply honored that my book was included in The Radical Remission Projects newsletter as recommended reading. 

This will look like nepotism because Richard is a dear friend who provided a quote for my book cover, however I am mainly friends with him because we are of the same mind about most things, including death.

We both deal with it using a good dose of sarcasm and humour whilst also being big old existential softies who have our moments.

His book about his cancer diagnosis sees his coping mechanism of humour balanced with the honest sadnesses of potentially leaving behind young children who might forget him, before returning to humourous disapproval at his wife's imagined new man.

My own firmly held belief that you can't live well without the shadow of death also comes through as he starts to live better and healthier in recovery, thanks to his brush with the reaper. 

Las Penas, New Mexico, is the setting for this moving novel that follows a year in the lives of the Padilla family. Valdez Quade creates characters with dazzling depth, and you’ll root for the Padillas as they stumble through twelve months, where everything they know is upended and destabilized.

The way this book portrays community reminds me of a favorite Sally Rooney quote from Normal People: “No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”

Less than a century ago, having a diagnosis of cancer was almost universally a death sentence, if the word was even uttered at all.

In The Emperor of All Maladies, Mukherjee (who overlapped in training with me) takes us back in time to the heroic – and at times cavalier and even brutal – procedures and discoveries that led to the very first cancer treatments, some of which are told by the people who pioneered those therapies.

Sometimes when faced with impossible choices, the answer is to double down and keep going – even in the face of an existential threat.

As a visual humorist (I deliver my jokes on paper), I shared an immediate rapport with standup comedian Steve Mazan, who was pitching his book at an IdeaFestival, while still dealing with the lingering consequences of liver cancer. Steve’s answer was to say, “I’ve been dying to appear on David Letterman. Now I’m literally dying to do it!”

There’s something to be said of checking off the important boxes on your bucket list. Steve Mazan turned his list into a book, one that delivers a powerful punch line.

This memoir is one of the most compelling accounts of confronting trauma that I’ve ever read. In the case of the author, the traumas are multiple: fear of deportation due to her “illegal” status; years of sexual abuse by her paternal grandfather; and later in life, the discovery that she carries a gene that leaves her susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer. I was moved as I learned how Talusan found the words—both as a writer and as a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a romantic partner, and a citizen—to speak of these difficulties. Her writing about this journey is both spare and powerful, and it bears re-reading and deep reflection. Whenever I return to this book, I find inspiration.

The author of Keto for Cancer, Miriam Kalamian, became a nutritionist specializing in the ketogenic diet when her young son developed brain cancer, and, through her perseverance, he lived years beyond expectations.

Most people don’t realize that there is a connection between diet and cancer. Kalamian explains that many types of cancer cells love sugar, and depriving these cells of sugar by eating a ketogenic diet can slow cancer growth. Many clinical trials of the keto diet combined with standard treatment are in progress for various types of cancer. Kalamian explains the rationale and how to put this strict version of the keto diet into action.

I found the book to be very complete, highly informative, and easy to understand.