This was the first book I read this year way back in January, and I had just had my daughter (she turns one this week!) and it really just gave me a lot of feelings, and I didn’t know how to write them all in a book review, so I put it off to “let it settle” and whoooooops now it’s December! Hi guys! This is a feelings book. It is grim, but it is also optimistic and lovely and hopeful. Kalanthi was 36 and […]
Backlog #CBRBingo
According to Goodreads I shelved When Breath Becomes Air on December 6, 2016 so it is a pretty clear choice for the Backlog bingo square. “What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?” Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at the age of thirty-six just as he was completing his decade’s long training to be a neurosurgeon. He had felt for months he may have cancer but put off getting any scans done until his back pain became unbearable. Paul had […]
The end of the beginning
When this book first came out, a friend of mine texted me and told me I had to read it. I dutifully added to my TBR list, but privately I thought I’d never get around to it. I couldn’t imagine ever being in a mood where I’d want to read the memoir of a man who died of cancer in his 30s. I work in direct service, and it’s a convenient excuse to get out of a lot of “sad” things. I see real life […]
At Least the Baby Doesn’t Die
It’s a darned good thing I have cold — the kind where your eyes water and your sinuses itch — because at least I can blame my now-puffy eyes on that instead of the fact that When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi, made me cry like a kid. Paul is — was — a talented neurosurgeon who found out he had cancer at the tail-end of his residency at Stanford. Because cutting on people eventually gets to be out of the question when you’re terminally […]