Twelve in Twelve

For January, my pick was John Green’s Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. I was really excited to read this title. John Green is one of my favorite authors of all time. I think he writes the most impactful and devastating stories for YA readers. So, when this title was published, straying away from the classical third-person story telling, I couldn’t have been more intrigued.

As I’ve stated in other posts, I’m reading all of my titles this year via audio book. Some would argue that audio books are “cheating” and not actual “reading”. But then I raise you the question of, how did stories get passed down from generation to generation before the printing press was invented? Mostly through oral tradition. We told our stories to people who could not read or write, or even had access to books. We had town criers in the middle of the town square, standing on boxes and shouting the news and current events at the top of their lung. Oral tradition is just as important as being able to read. There have been studies that have shown that hearing a story lights up the same parts of the brain as reading the story. So, really, one could argue I’m doing the exact same thing as reading.

But that’s a conversation for another day. Maybe I will write a piece on it after I finish my year of audio books.

Now, back to the real reason we’re all here. I listened to this title on a road trip back from Texas to Mexico, a few days after the new year. Surprisingly, it took me the whole 11 hour trip to finish the book. The book is only 5 hours and 36 minutes. But with multiple stops and toddler music breaks, it was bound to be extended out. Still, by the end of the book, I was convinced that I needed to read more this year. And I needed to read titles that impacted me greatly. Green absolutely gave me the reading-bug again, and I could not have been happier to start off my personal challenge with this book.

Now, I am going to dive into the story without spoiling as much as possible. Green introduces us to a boy named Henry. They met when Henry was 17 years old, whilst Green was on a trip in Sierra Leone. By the time Green and Henry meet, Henry is already living with tuberculosis (TB), in a hospital that is known for having the reputation of “you come in, you don’t come out”. While taking us through Henry’s journey with TB, Green discusses the drastic and intricate history of tuberculosis. We go from completely not understanding the disease to idolizing how thin and delicate the disease made women look in the Victorian era. He discusses how differently treatment was approached and distributed unfairly and unequally. There is politics and racism and prejudice behind the history of the disease. It’s such an intricate look into the history of the disease and impact on the world as a whole. But Green also manages to make the disease so personal. By introducing the reader to Henry, and allowing us to follow his journey adjacent to the historical timeline, we get to witness almost real-time impacts of TB.

But along with this emotional journey, you are informed and educated on just how much injustice surrounds the treatment of the most impacted countries of our world. Green makes an excellent point of how racially charged the distribution of treatments and vaccines is. We currently live in a world where the treatment for TB has been around for at least a century now. And yet, it’s not readily available to everyone and anyone who may be suffering from it. The amount of resources given in the book are inspiring too, and I’m positive some of them will end up on my future reading lists.

Overall, I absolutely recommend this book. It made me actually feel something after reading it. And it has been so, so long since a book has done that for me. It was the perfect mixture of personal and historical, and finding that balance with something that has such a broad and expansive history, is such a challenge. I am pleased that this was the book I started my reading challenge with. It was a pleasure to meet Henry through Green’s storytelling. And it was a pleasure to learn about something that I had so many misconstrued ideas and knowledge about. This is what reading should be for everyone; education and inspiration. This book encapsulates that perfectly. I hope you’ll add it to your TBR lists on your nightstands, or at least give it a nice spot in your home library.

Happy reading, friends.