Somewhere between the serious scholarship and the study carrels, our collection has a secret life. Some of our books have titles so ridiculous, you’ll want to check whether they’re real. You’ll never find a book like these by accident online. Browsing our physical collection means stumbling on something unexpected, like a title that makes you laugh out loud or a cover that makes you do a double take. Stop by, wander the stacks, and see what jumps out.
The field guide to dumb birds of the whole stupid world by Matt Kracht
Part bird guide, part comedy routine. This book catalogues birds with the unfiltered commentary of someone who has spent far too long studying them. It’s very funny, and it isn’t shy about language, so consider yourself warned. Pair it with a real field guide (or don’t).
If Nietzsche were a narwhal : what animal intelligence reveals about human stupidity by Justin Gregg
As someone who just had the pleasure of seeing Justin Gregg speak at a conference, I highly recommend this book. He asks whether humans are as brilliant as we think we are, and what other animals can teach us about our habit of getting things wrong. It’s a smart, readable look at animal minds.
Will my cat eat my eyeballs? : and other questions about dead bodies by Caitlin Doughty
Caitlin Doughty, a mortician, answers real questions from curious kids (and adults) about death and what happens to our bodies afterward. The title question is answered honestly, along with plenty of others you were too embarrassed to ask. It’s morbid in the most charming way.
Poking the Squid: What We Can Learn from Animal Sex by Perrin Roosevelt Ireland
Yes, it’s in our collection, and yes, you can check it out. This book is a tour of the strange, surprising and occasionally scary ways animals reproduce. If you’ve ever wondered how nature got so weird, here’s your answer.
A meteorite killed my cow: stuff that happens when space rocks hit Earth by Richard Greenwood
You might not want to think about it, but space rocks really do land where they shouldn’t. This book looks at what happens when the universe drops by unannounced and the things that happen to be in the way.
99 ways to die: and how to avoid them by Ashley Alker
A cheerfully grim look at the many ways life can go wrong, paired with practical advice for staying on the right side of statistics. Can be read as entertainment or a safety manual.
Slow death by rubber duck: how the toxicity of everyday life affects our health by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie
Despite the title, this is a serious look at the chemicals hiding in ordinary household items, from bath toys to shampoo. The authors even use themselves as test subjects. The kind of book that makes you read labels differently.
Humble pi : when math goes wrong in the real world by Matt Parker
Former math teach Matt Parker collects the times numbers have let us down, from bridges that wobbled to spreadsheets that sank budgets. The mistakes are real and the consequences range from hilarious to alarming. Math wasn’t your thing (it wasn’t mine either, don’t worry)? That’s okay! The explanations are friendly enough for those of us who haven’t looked at an equation or formula since high school.
View these titles and other silly suggestions here!
Got a Title in Mind? Tell Us!
Don’t see a book you want? Think it would make an excellent addition to our collection? You can request that we purchase it! Our collection grows with your suggestions, and we love a good recommendation (especially a silly one). Submit a request through our Suggest a purchase form, or contact your liaison librarian.
The staff at Schulich Library are so excited to announce that we are launching a new reading club called CLEAR: the McGill Libraries’ Climate Learning, Engagement and Action Reading Club https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/clear The club is open to all current McGill students and staff who would like to learn more about climate issues and solutions. Join us at four in-person meetings taking place in Schulich Library over the academic year. Registration for the first two meetings is now open. Participants will read a chapter from a specific climate-related book for each meeting with the chapters pre-selected for the first two meetings and to be decided by participants for the second two. All book chapters will be available online through the McGill Libraries. Register today! Registration will be ongoing over the course of the academic year, as space permits.
With support from the McGill Office of Sustainability’s Sustainability Projects Fund, we are happy to offer food and beverages at each meeting, as well as a draw for five print copies of each book. We are partnering with the McGill Wellness Hub to have mental health aspects of this topic embedded into the programming. We are also partnering with the student group SEAM: Sustainability in Engineering at McGill in the planning. We are looking forward to reading and learning with you!
Our thanks to Théophileand Ruolin for submitting their FACC 400 assignment to post on The Turret. This student guest post looks at the acquisition of small startups by large pharmaceutical companies and how it might impact consumers.
Big Pharma’s Shopping Spree: Who Wins When Drugmakers Buy Startups?
by Théophile Soulié and Ruolin Hue
Known for its blockbuster GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, Eli Lilly has been putting those profits toward an acquisition spree. On August 31, it agreed to buy Merida Biosciences, which develops precision therapies for autoimmune and allergic diseases, for up to $2.875 billion—its 13th biotech acquisition this year [1].
Lilly’s buying spree reflects a broader shift in how big pharma develops new drugs. Large drugmakers once handled most stages of R&D themselves, from identifying drug targets to developing and marketing treatments, while occasionally acquiring or licensing drugs from smaller companies. In the late 1970s, for example, Lilly licensed lab-made human insulin from Genentech, widely considered the world’s first biotech company [2]. Today, those exceptions have become the norm.
Of the 138 new drugs approved by the FDA for the 20 largest biopharma companies between 2015 and 2021, only 28% were invented in-house [3]. Most (65%) came from outside companies, and 41% came through acquisitions alone [3]. For Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, Takeda and Biogen, every drug approved during that period was invented elsewhere.
When Big Pharma Buys, Who Wins and Who Pays?
For patients, the strongest argument for acquisitions is reach. Small companies now develop most new drugs, but big pharma often gets them to more patients: drugs invented by small biotechs but launched by larger companies had median second-year sales seven times higher than other launches [4]. This could be partly attributed to big pharma’s global sales and manufacturing networks, but it could also reflect its ability to acquire drugs with larger potential markets, and charge more for them.
Once a startup is acquired, the buyer controls the price. Pharmasset, the startup behind a breakthrough hepatitis C treatment, expected to charge $36,000 per course of treatment. After Gilead acquired the company, the drug launched at $84,000 [5]. At least 27 state Medicaid programs, unable to afford the treatment for everyone who needed it, restricted access to their sickest patients.
For investors, the question is whether acquisitions make risky research easier or harder to fund, which matters for patients too. Only 7.9% of drugs that enter human trials are ever approved [6], so venture investors depend on a small number of successful exits to offset frequent losses. Biotech investor Bruce Booth argues that acquisitions reward investors for taking those risks, especially because few startups can afford to develop a drug all the way to market [7]. Even during the 2025 funding slump, startups continued to be acquired. HSBC Innovation Banking’s Jonathan Norris said this showed companies could still reach an exit with early clinical data [8].
Critics argue that these deals are lopsided. Most startups cannot afford late-stage trials on their own, and there are only a handful of potential buyers, limiting their bargaining power. Big pharma can therefore capture much of a drug’s future value while startups and their investors bear much of the early risk [9]. If that dynamic persists, venture capitalists may earn less from early-stage biotech and become less willing to fund the riskiest projects, which are often the ones leading to major breakthroughs. For patients with hard-to-treat diseases, that could mean fewer new treatments and longer waits for them.
Buying to Bury: Killer Acquisitions
Not every acquisition is about bringing a drug to patients. Sometimes the goal is to make sure a drug never competes. Economists call this a “killer acquisition”: a company buys a startup whose drug threatens one of its own products, then quietly shuts the project down.
This is not just a theory. A 2021 study in the Journal of Political Economy by Cunningham, Ederer and Ma tracked thousands of drug projects [10]. It found that projects overlapping with the buyer’s existing products were 23.4% less likely to keep being developed after the acquisition. The authors estimate that 5 to 7% of pharmaceutical acquisitions are killer acquisitions, and that these deals cluster just below the size at which U.S. regulators must be notified.
The best-known case is Acthar, a drug for infantile spasms whose price went from $40 a vial in 2001 to more than $34,000 [11]. In 2013, its maker Questcor bought the U.S. rights to Synacthen, a cheaper competing drug, and never brought it to market. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued, and in 2017 Questcor’s new owner, Mallinckrodt, paid $100 million and had to license Synacthen to a competitor [11].
Conclusion
Acquisitions are now how most new drugs reach patients, and they give investors a reason to fund risky science. But the same deals let buyers set higher prices, squeeze startups and, sometimes, bury drugs that threaten their own sales. Closer review of pharma deals, including smaller ones, would keep the benefits without the killing.
[3] A. Schuhmacher, M. Hinder, A. Dodel, O. Gassmann, and D. Hartl, “Investigating the origins of recent pharmaceutical innovation,” Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, July 2023, doi: 10.1038/d41573-023-00102-z.
[6] E. Kim, J. Yang, S. Park, and K. Shin, “Factors Affecting Success of New Drug Clinical Trials,” Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science, vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 737–750, May 2023, doi: 10.1007/s43441-023-00509-1.
[9] E. Billette de Villemeur, J. W. Scannell, and B. Versaevel, “Biopharmaceutical R&D outsourcing: Short-term gain for long-term pain?,” Drug Discovery Today, vol. 27, no. 11, p. 103333, Nov. 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.drudis.2022.08.001.
[10] Cunningham, C., Ederer, F., & Ma, S. (2021). Killer acquisitions. Journal of Political Economy, 129(3), 649–702. doi: 10.1086/712506.
