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Friday, August 5, 2016

#46 - When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi



#46
Title:  When Breath Becomes Air
Author:   Paul Kalanithi
Genre:  Memoir
Category:  Non-Fiction
Rating:  B+
CDs/Hours:  5/5.5
Published:  2016
Dates:   7/30/16 – 8/4/16

This book is one of the best 75 books in the past 75 years and it was just published this year.  It will be truly a classic when you consider it’s about a neurosurgeon who discovers he has lung cancer.  As the summary on the back of the box says – “One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live.”  Only 36 years old Kalanithi had many questions he wanted answers to – “What make life worth living in the face of death?  What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present?  What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away?”  Together with his large, loving family Kalanithi discovers the meaning of life.  He was a brilliant writer and surgeon and was transformed as he explored literature in pursuit of what is important in life.  I admire that he found what he was looking for and reported in a sensitive, matter-of-fact way without sentimentality.

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