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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/2044345-Louise-is-Elizabeth-Hykes-blog/day/12-4-2022
Rated: E · Book · Writing · #2044345
Writing about what I have been reading and encountering in the media.
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December 4, 2022 at 11:44pm
December 4, 2022 at 11:44pm
#1041402
BOOK
Kalanithi, Paul, When Breath Becomes Air, Corcovado, Inc. Random House, 2016, (Kindle edition)

I encountered a list of 4 books with the headline 4 books Bill Gates read twice. I looked to see if I had read any of them and I hadn’t. Curious about what Bill Gates might find important, I decided to read the first one on the list, a memoir of a person with intelligence, ambition, and every possible educational opportunity who finds he is dying at age 36 of lung cancer.

As a college student, he wants to understand the mind and wants to know what makes life worth living. He sets out to study literature, but when he realizes that the mind resides in the brain, he also embarks on the study of biology and neurology. He was an earnest student but realized there is more to life than study. He wanted to learn about relationships. If the unexamined life is not worth living, is the unlived life worth examining? He asked himself.

He wrote, I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains shielded in centimeter thick skulls, into communion…it was the relational aspect of humans—ie. “human rationality”—that undergirded meaning…There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced—of passion, of hunger, of love—bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts and heartbeats. This curiosity led him to complete a master's degree in history and philosophy of science and then to enter medical school.

He discusses aspects of his medical training and of his relationship with his wife, and then, the experience of feeling ill, getting no diagnosis, continuing to deteriorate, and finally receiving the diagnosis of cancer, which he knew would be terminal at some point. He is advised by his oncologist to find meaning in his life. The writing of the memoir is part of that process. As he wrote, he came to ponder science vs. religion and wrote clearly and meaningfully about that. Then, he wrote about dying.

I don’t know what Bill Gates found important about this book, but I do know it is interesting, thought provoking and very well written. I read it basically in one sitting while sick with COVID. I suggest that it be read when the reader is healthy.


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