Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

عندما تتحول الأنفاس إلى هواء: اجعل لحياتك معنى قبل فوات الأوان by Paul Kalanithi

33 reviews

balfies's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad fast-paced

3.0

Immensely powerful, visceral posthumous memoir by a neuroscientist-neurosurgeon about his shifting philosophies around life and death in the face of his work and his cancer diagnosis. This was truly compelling to read, I finished it in one sitting. He has a very distinct, intelligent voice. Feel like this is one to return to at big moments of hardship and grief in life.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Child death, Death, Suicide, Terminal illness, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

iisa's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, and Medical content

Moderate: Death of parent

nataliebootlah's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete."

Wow. What a beautiful memoir.

Paul Kalanithi is in his last year of neurosurgery residency when he’s struck with debilitating back pain that’s eventually diagnosed as stage IV lung cancer. What Paul does next is write, and we are lucky to have his book. 

Through this tragic, vivid story, we witness Paul’s life full of study, literature, love, hardship, sickness, and death. It is a deeply moving, heart-rendering look at what it means to live. 

TW: cancer, death, medical content. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Medical content, and Death of parent

Moderate: Grief

northernlitreading's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75

just so heartbreaking but beautiful and really genuinely insightful. what a book, i’ve never read anything like it. (i don’t want to say anything negative because it truly was brilliant but sometimes there were cliche lines that really took me out of the book, good lessons obviously but just reminded me that there were pages in front of me) 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, and Death of parent

flamingtashhh's review against another edition

reflective medium-paced

2.0

I thought this was way overhyped. Summary: guy tries to get as close to death as possible, achieves this goal. Dies. 

In seriousness, I didn’t like the author at all. I cried at the end because of course death is terrible, but this was out of no love for him. He seemed to have a lot of self-importance that was tied to his work. I’m very grateful for medicine, but this kind of arrogance- that which declares medical treatment to be the greatest of all treatment, or at least doctors the best givers of care there are- is dangerous and absurd. It’s like if Jack from Lost wrote a book. I know plenty of people like this author, and none of them are happy and I wouldn’t take seriously any philosophical treatises of theirs, either.

And I’m not going to make a habit of picking apart the prose of a man writing through his last year, so I have nothing to say about the writing itself. 

I actually liked the epilogue a lot, written by the author’s wife. She says there’s a lot he didn’t convey about himself and his values in the book, and honestly I really appreciated that. Her notes, and the pain and hurt in them, really gave another dimension to what would have otherwise been an uninteresting read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Infertility, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

ninah17's review against another edition

emotional inspiring sad fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, and Death of parent

booksthatburn's review against another edition

reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Gore, Blood, and Vomit

Minor: Forced institutionalization and Death of parent

belated's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Terminal illness, Medical content, and Death of parent

Moderate: Pregnancy

Minor: Suicide

ntvenessa's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Of course you begin knowing the end. Dr Paul Kalanithi dies. This account, both unfinished and finished (depending on the sense you mean) is a deeply introspective reflection on life, meaning and death from someone who has been acutely attuned. The brief memoir focuses on Kalanithi's dual relationship with life and death as a doctor and as a patient, and underlying that, we see our own deepest existential fears reflected back in his humanity. Freshly diagnosed, it is Kalanithi's instinct to ensure the futures of those around him, though he himself is unsure of his present. Most of us are not dying of severe illness, but all of us will wonder what our lives can mean, what it should mean. Kalanithi grapples with increasing urgency, his own truth about what makes life meaningful, and it is this frenetic energy that is so calmly tempered by clarity and authority that is striking. No doubt the dying are suffering, but Kalanithi doesn't dwell so long. In a way, the brevity of the book brings to the fore what Kalanithi most wanted to say, and largely these were philosophical things. I think the foreword by Dr Abraham Verghese should be skipped and unread entirely, and I think the epilogue written by his wife, Dr Lucy Kalanithi was illuminating. After finishing Paul Kalanithi's meditative words, his clarity is softened by the bookend that is his wife's epilogue. We can only guess of Paul Kalanithi's contributions to neuroscience had he lived, but we already know of the contributions he has made. It is possible to live while dying.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Death of parent

enbybooklove's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

The book is excellent and should be required reading for every human. The author himself came across as a little arrogant and I wish his workaholism had been acknowledged, but it is still an entirely necessary book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, and Death of parent

Moderate: Gore and Medical trauma

Minor: Infertility and Pregnancy