When Breath Becomes Air
When Breath Becomes Air is a non-fiction autobiographical book written by American neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi. It is a memoir about his life and illness, battling stage IV metastatic lung cancer. It was posthumously published by Random House on January 12, 2016.
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What Hacker News says
- When Breath Becomes Air was a great book that seems relevant here
- Another powerful read that touches similar themes to this article is the memoir When Breath Becomes Air
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25899336-when-breath-bec...
- There are only 2 books I could not put down once I started: The Davinci Code and When Breath Becomes Air.
The first I raced through as fast as I could.
The second I savored like a fine wine.
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi.
A fascinating memoir by a philosopher turned brain surgeon, facing a terminal cancer diagnosis. A person who spent their entire life pondering the morality of life being faced with their own ultimatum.
I reread it once a year, at minimum. A deeply moving book.
- I recommend reading "When Breath Becomes Air," my understanding of the author's perspective is that when faced with imminent death, one should do what one considers to be important.
The sneaky thing is, you are going to die, so the above statement should ALWAYS be how you're living your life.
If your work isn't important enough to you to be doing if you know you'll probably be dead in 1-3 years, you probably shouldn't be doing it now.
For me, my work is important to me and my values (I run a software co-op), and also enables me to live out my values in ways I'd like to do in the future (kicking off a global village construction kit project - for which I need money, lol).
Engineering certainly makes me a lot of money compared to when I was a teacher, but also it allows me to help build technology to liberate people, which is very important to me. In that way, I believe I'm successful, because I get to build things that make me better at building technology that liberates.
If I were to find out I would die in the next few years, I believe only thing I would change is shorten my long term plans by working my own contracts less, sell my stocks, and travel more, if I was healthy enough to. I believe I'd still run my co-op.
- I've found that a lot of people like Paul Kalanithi's writing style in "When Breath Becomes Air". Not the happiest, but people like it.
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is also well-written.
Some people say "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance" is very well-written, but I disagree heavily, it sucks.
"The Little Prince" is well-written, even if it's a children's book.
Kurt Vonnegut writes well.
You can't go wrong with The Western Canon.
Charles Fort, if you can decipher him.
E.O. Wilson, "Anthill" and "Biophilia"
Freeman Dyson, "A Many-Colored Glass"
Annie Dillard, "Holy the Firm"
Ray Bradbury, "The Martian Chronicles"
Douglas Coupland, "Kitten Clone". His writing style felt unique to me.
