The Favorites and Everything is Tuberculosis

I have a lot to say on today’s fiction and nonfiction books, so I’ll keep this long overdue life update short and sweet. Tom and I got married on June 21st in Virginia surrounded by our closest family and friends. It was honestly a perfect event, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the research, hard work, and endless support of my family. Thank you, Mom and Dad! After our wedding, Tom and I left for a two week honeymoon through the Netherlands, Paris, London, and Tokyo. There will be a lot of travel stories, recommendations, and pictures to come! 

On a professional note, we decided that I won’t return to the classroom full-time this year. I’m excited to be subbing where I taught last year and pursuing teaching and writing opportunities in the community as they become available. Our future involves a lot of travel, a move next summer, and more quality time spent with those we love. It’s an exciting time in our lives as newlyweds, and I’m grateful for the freedom that I have this year. I will miss the classroom and my students, but I have plenty to fill my plate right now. 

Today I’m excited to write about one of my favorite fiction books of 2025 and a nonfiction book I highly anticipated but didn’t find quite as fulfilling as I had hoped. 

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The Favorites by Layne Fargo

Midway through the year is a good time to start thinking of a best of the year list, and while “best” is so subjective person-to-person, dependent on my mood, and in a constant state of flux based on what else I’ve read recently, I can say, without a doubt, that The Favorites has landed in and will remain in the top 5 for me this year. Now this plot concept is going to make you shake your head in disbelief, and I understand. I was skeptical reading the concept and had the urge to roll my eyes. After all, how modern can we make an adaptation before it loses its characters, plot, and, to quote Gen Z, its vibe? The concept: Wuthering Heights meets ice dancing and Olympic drama. Sounds far fetched and campy, but trust me, this is a book worth reading. The audiobook narration has a full-cast recording, which is the best way to tell this immersive and dramatic story, and I don’t know if I would have loved this wild ride nearly as much if it didn’t have tea-spilling (darn, I’m really influenced by Gen Z today) podcast energy. Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha are infamous, captivating, and the kind of star-crossed lovers who flip-flop between all-consuming love, passion, and lust and bitter, headline-making feuding, deep, deep hurts and betrayal. 

This book is intense, juicy, and such a rollercoaster from start to finish. If you enjoyed the fake documentary concept of Daisy Jones and the Six, this follows the same concept without feeling needlessly derivative. The novel is framed as the first time Katarina will share her own story in her own words after a dramatic/tragic/life-changing incident that drove her out of competition. Like the real-life celebrities who are idolized, villainized, objectified, and dissected in the media, Katarina wants to take ownership of her narrative and set the record straight. However, readers always have to question how reliable and sympathetic they should be to first-person accounts and that applies to the many narrators you’ll get to hear from.  

This leads right into part of what makes this story so compelling: whose voices and stories get told and whose get told for them. Heath, notably, does not consent to be part of the documentary, so much of his thoughts, feelings, and emotions are told through what other characters hear, see, and observe. Given the tumultuous nature of his relationship with Katarina, it adds an interesting (and at times frustrating) element to the storytelling that the woman who consumes his life with such obsessive desire and such stinging pain is the one to jointly tell both of their stories through the obviously biased lens of her own feelings and experiences. Does Katarina take full responsibility for her actions? Absolutely not. Does Heath? Absolutely not. Are they truly messy, selfish, volatile, passionate-to-a-fault characters? 100%. And that’s the magic of this story. It’s so fun to read about characters that burn so brightly, who rage and love and train so intensely, who want without shame. There is nothing idealistic about  the portrayed relationship. There is nothing to romanticize. But, and this is so important, it is such an addictive narrative that is propulsive and never, ever boring.  

Is the plot a 1:1 of the Bronte classic? No, and that’s a good thing. The core tensions and character traits are there. You can see Heath as the hungry outsider eager to be loved. You watch Katarina selfishly choose her own interests, cast Heath aside, and suffer from his anger and burning desire for revenge. You can’t help but look away at this oddly obsessive couple, at this commentary on modern day competition, celebrity, media scrutiny, and societal expectations, at this world that is so small it is suffocatingly incestuous. Why are classics so enduring anyway? It’s because they tell us something true about ourselves that lasts across cultures and centuries. We may not be living in a Gothic estate on the windswept moors, but we know what it means to want, to love, to hate. We know what it is to hurt and to help. We know what it is to lose something and someone. We never can tire of such universally powerful stories, and they are what brought me purpose as a teacher. 

All in all, this is my first true 5 star read of 2025, and I wish I had read it in a book club to get the chance to share my excitement, shock, and admiration. However, if you’re going to pick this one up, please give yourself the gift of the fantastic full-cast recording that brings this interview-heavy narrative to life in the way it was meant to be conveyed.

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Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green 

John Green was one of a handful of authors that majorly impacted my reading and writing as a teenager. If you look waaaaay back in my Facebook timeline (but, honestly, you really don’t need to) you’ll see that The Fault in Our Stars is one of the first books I ever posted about loving. There was something magical about these philosophizing teenagers and just how erudite I felt reading about them. At BookCon (yes, there is a wonderful convention just for books at the same location ComicCon is held in NYC), the line to see John Green was overwhelming. He was such a celebrity sensation, and he achieved a level of fame and recognition that very few YA authors, or, really any author, has been able to do. While he’s best known for his YA books or CrashCourse Youtube videos, he has been working in health advocacy for years on the global stage. Given that his best known books are about cancer and OCD, this makes sense.

Everything is Tuberculosis is the culmination of his years of advocacy and research and his urgent and necessary belief that there is goodness, hope, and power in humanity. His writing is an education as much as it is a rallying cry to make tuberculosis testing and healthcare more effective and accessible around the world but most especially in the developing countries that are most struggling with a lack of resources. The book zooms into the personal journey of Henry, a young boy from Sierra Leone who struggled for years to battle tuberculosis. Green felt a particular connection to Henry because his own son shares the same name, and this ties into his overall reflection about how the outcome of your sickness, care, and recovery are highly dependent on where you live. The other half of the book is far more ambitious and zooms out widely to see how tuberculosis has impacted us historically and culturally. As someone interested in both literature and history, there was a lot for me to learn from and enjoy in this section, but my biggest complaint is that I wanted more.

The book is a slim 208 pages, and given that this book is the history of such a monumental infection as well as the personal journey of a tuberculosis survivor as well as a call for change and awareness, I felt almost cheated when I reached the last page. For such an ambitious project, I felt like Green could have expanded more. 

Is there a clearcut solution that can be immediately implemented to solve the world’s problem of preventable death? Sadly, no. While Green does emphasize that so many people could live or suffer far less, the solutions take money, trained staff, and resources that a magic wand cannot conjure. Green has an idealistic optimism with narration grounded in present reality and history, and there is going to be frustration that the two don’t intersect. This book exemplifies that hope and despair can co-exist. Someone like Henry can live a full and happy life after years of uncertainty and sickness. 1.5 million other people will die in the course of a year. 

If you like medical histories, public health, narrative nonfiction, and approachable, conversational nonfiction, this is a quick read that will make you feel more educated on an under-represented issue. However, you will probably not feel entirely satisfied when you close the book. 

If you’re nostalgic like me for John Green’s videos and endless excitement, his Youtube video introducing the book is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFGSXP1eABY

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Doing: As mentioned before, our past two weeks were a whirlwind of travel across 4 different countries. I have not travelled widely before being with Tom, and I have really enjoyed all of the new places that we’ve explored together. 

Watching: I have to blame Instagram for this one, but I made Tom binge Good American Family with me. Yes, Instagram’s constant reels about it spoiled a lot of the key scenes, but it was still a thrilling, psychological, creepy, heartfelt, heartwrenching, frustrating, and intense show that I just couldn’t stop watching. The fact that it is based on a true story makes it all the more tragic. 

Listening: The only album I listened to nonstop in Virginia was the Broadway cast recording of Hadestown. Getting to see it live in London was such a dream, and I literally didn’t stop smiling during the entire first act. 

Eating: After all of the incredible meals we had in Europe and Tokyo, we switched gears to some classic American fare with homemade chili, chocolate chip cookies, and brownies when we got back to Guam. The bean-free chili is Tom’s mom’s recipe, and her suggestion to add celery was such a good one! The chocolate chip cookie recipe is the one my mom takes to the farmers market, and those giant 5 ounce cookies are soft, indulgent, and dangerously addictive. The brownies are also the ones my mom makes, and I’ve been making the tried and true recipe for years. 

Wearing: Sam’s Club was, shockingly, the source of my recent clothes shopping success while I was back in Virginia. I got white Adidas sneakers that I wore all throughout our honeymoon, and they held up so well on our long walking days. I think white sneakers look just a little more elevated and are a little more versatile, so they were perfect for cobblestone strolls and dinner afterwards. I also got blue, white, and black linen pull-on Gap shorts at Sam’s Club that are soft, dressy, and super comfortable. I love that I could mix and match those 3 colors with so many different tops and that they were light-weight with pockets. The Sam’s Club prices couldn’t be beat, and I am definitely missing the American big box stores.