If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know I was assigned to read p53 The Gene that Cracked the Cancer Code (by Sue Armstrong) at the start of the semester for a voluntary assignment. I actually thought it was a very nice assignment -extra marks for reading a book, what's not to like?! :D
Essentially, it is the story about the discovery of p53 -a gene that was found to be the key to knowing what cancer is, and how it makes your cells go crazy (it's non-fiction, of course). Shockingly enough, we've only discovered this recently, and so much work has been put into it. p53 also gives you a tour around what the scientific method is (how experiments occur -how they are planned, carried out and eventually understood), which I think is a great topic -too many times we take science for granted when really so many people are working for the world to understand! (hey, med student right here :P).