Book : When Breath Becomes Air .
Author : Paul Kalinithi .
Genres : Non-Fiction , Autobiography , Memoir .
Rate : 5/5.
“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”
Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
It’s not difficult to get impressed with a book..
Either you enjoy the story with the interesting, unexpected or exciting plot…
Or,
You relate to the outstanding and charismatic characters..
Or,
The words and the author writing style enchanted you…
So imagine facing the situation where you are reading a book about a real-life person..
With inspiring, heartbreaking and great story…
Written in an extraordinary, philosophical and thought-provoking writing style…
And no matter how many times you keep rereading the same book, page, paragraph…
The whole experience gets better, you get more connected to this amazing person (that it feels like, you already met him, and you knew him as a colleague, doctor and father)…
You get more attached to the book, you are even ready to break your heart more and more just to keep reading his words…
.
The only thing I can tell you about my experience rereading (When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi) is that I was about to start sobbing in the bus on my way to my clinical placement…
When I finished this book for the third time, I couldn’t stop my heart from breaking for the thousand time even though I already knew the ending and I have read every single word before!
.
But you know what it was worth it, being able to read, learn and meet Kalanithi through his own words is an honor and a huge inspiration…
.
His dedication to his work, patients, family, literature and life is so admirable!
.
Believe me when I say, you could feel his words. Through the book, you could feel his restlessness while searching for his true place in this world, his love and dedication for science and medicine, his Heartbreak, fear and hope…
.
As you knew, in my reviews I don’t like to discuss the story (you can read Goodreads blurb if you want that 😁), I like to talk about how the book made me feel, how it has changed me and how it could affect you too.
And in my opinion, this book (when breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi) is a MUST-READ, it’s a masterpiece.
Highly, highly recommended.
“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Goodreads Synopsis :
For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question ‘What makes a life worth living?’
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
What makes 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? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.'” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.
Until Next time ,
Be kind and stay strong .
Lana ❤
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