I was reading this book when I got an MRI result stating "very high likelihood of clinical cancer", so I really took a personal interest, and still after my biopsy returned nothing (I'm at the age where increasingly medical visits end with "good news, you don't have cancer") I was wrapped up in the author's journey even though I knew how it was going to end. Much of his story is about his quest to understand the human condition through medicine, science, literature, and religion, and his battle with cancer was no different.