When Breath Becomes Air in Around the World in 80 Books

Jun 20, 2017 Elizabeth rated it it was amazing

Shelves: autobiographical, california, books-of-your-life-with-elizabeth

This is sort of a kick-you-in-the-butt book—a book to remind you not to sleepwalk through your life. I was touched by the abruptness of the tale. Kalanithi does not even finish writing it before succumbing to lung cancer, and his wife is left to put together the last pieces. Go do your dreams! Now! That is a key takeaway, told in visceral, impossible-to-ignore terms.

*Full disclosure: I lived in the same house as Paul in college (his friends called him Pubby) and he was a stellar human being. I'm ...more

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Jan 16, 2017 Ryan rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017, borrowed, audiobooks

Funny thing about picking up a book without reading the back of it: one actually doesn't know what they are getting into. If I did, I might not have started this one...at least, not right now. Of course, without knowing that, I didn't know what sort of waters I was wading into until I was hip-deep in them.

But life's like that sometimes, right?

This moment hit especially hard:

“Bereavement is not the truncation of married love,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “but one of its regular phases—like the honeymoon.” ...more

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Jan 20, 2016 Katie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, male-author, memoirs, review-copy

When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir by Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who is diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of thirty-six. He wrote the books in the final months of his life, and it is his reflection on his experiences as a doctor, his views on what it means to be human, and his coming to terms with his own mortality.

In the first half of the book, Kalanithi discusses his life before being diagnosed with cancer. From a young age, Kalanithi had a deep love for reading and literature. H When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir by Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who is diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of thirty-six. He wrote the books in the final months of his life, and it is his reflection on his experiences as a doctor, his views on what it means to be human, and his coming to terms with his own mortality.

In the first half of the book, Kalanithi discusses his life before being diagnosed with cancer. From a young age, Kalanithi had a deep love for reading and literature. He found that literature contained powerful messages about human life, and did so in a way that was profoundly meaningful. In this quest for meaning, Kalanithi became fascinated with the brain and its role in the complexities of thought and emotion that makes us who we are. This led him to pursue degrees in both human biology and English literature and later go on to medical school.

Kalanithi writes a lot about the type of doctor he wants to be. As a doctor, he often encountered his patients in extremely vulnerable and private situations, and he felt a strong need to recognize the sacred in each individual. He recognizes the importance of being present and understanding what is important to his patients so he can be with them as they contemplate the unfathomable questions of what life becomes when a tumor or removal of a tumor alters the brain. Who do we become when the brain is changed in such a profound way that it affects personality, language, or impulse control? Is a life with a completely altered identity and limited function worth saving?

The book is incredibly well written and very moving. Kalanithi touches on a lot of very heartbreaking issues that are hard to think about. Patients confronted with losing their language abilities, parents watching their children diagnosed with brain cancer, parents losing their babies only days after birth. His own joys in holding his infant daughter, and the pain of knowing he would not be there to see her grow up. There is no shortage of tragic stories in this book and it is an extremely emotional read, but worth it for me. The book is probably not for everyone, it packs quite the emotional punch, so proceed with caution.

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.) ...more

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Nov 14, 2017 Nadine in NY Jones rated it really liked it

Shelves: lotsa-buzz, wouldnt-normally-read, memoir-and-autobiographical-essays, contemplation

I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.

My father died two weeks ago, after a long battle with cancer. While my old

I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.

My father died two weeks ago, after a long battle with cancer. While my older daughter was winning the second state championship with her Marching Band, I was a few hundred miles away, sitting in a hospital room all night long, watching my father die. It's a powerful experience. You can deny reality as long as you wish, but it will eventually come back and smack you in the face. My father was unconscious in his last hours, so I can't know what the experience was like for him; and before that he never gave up hope, he always had an optimistic outlook, so we always talked about getting better. That's a little more personal than I usually get in a book review, but it's that kind of book, I guess. I want to know what it was like for my father on that final journey that he was not really ready to take. What is it like on the other side of that hope, when you know it's over?

It is a powerful experience, to sit with someone as they die, to be there for their last breaths. I imagine it is a powerful experience for the dying, too. THe difference, of course, is that I am still here to talk about it.

I will never know what was in my father's mind in his last hours. This book didn't help me learn it. Since Kalanithi became too ill to complete the book, I don't even know what was in his mind in his last hours. It's his memoir, so he got to choose what to include, of course, and I'm a bit disappointed with some of his choices. First of all, he rarely mentions his wife. His main oncologist, Emma, plays a large role here, but his wife is just a shadow on the side. I know that can't have been how it was. Perhaps it was too personal, perhaps it was too difficult to write about, perhaps he was saving those parts for later and never got to them. He also shies away from the hard stuff: the fear, the breakdowns he must have had, the path he took before he found acceptance. That's really want I wanted to read bout, and I can understand why he didn't want to go there, but I'm also disappointed. But I do know some of his thoughts leading up to it. He was brave, he faced the end with open eyes, and that is comforting for me.

I highlighted many passages. He had powerful insights. One thing I did not like was his section on coming back to the church after his stint as an atheist. I disagree with everything he said there about life only having meaning if one believes in a god. My life has meaning without any god, and the meaning is: Life. There is no other meaning. It just is. We are alive because we are alive, we love each other and perceive life because we are sentient, and it's all due to random chance. I think perhaps Christianity was comforting him since it was like coming back home to his childhood. ...more

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