Welcome to The Book Seekers' Book of the Moment for May and June 2021!

If you don't know what Book of the Moment is, you can find more information about it here but, in a nutshell, it's a bi-monthly event, during which we all read the same book and then discuss it. The first month is focused on reading the book, the second is focused on discussing it. This thread is dedicated to the discussion of the book and there will be lots of SPOILERS!!!! You have been warned! If you want to talk about your reading progress in a spoiler-free environment, this thread is the place for that, and it is always open and active so you can read at your own pace. When you have finished the book and are ready to talk spoilers to your heart's content, you should post in this thread. You can post in this thread at any time during the two months, but the Official™ discussion won't take place until the start of the second month. This thread will be active until June 30th. Don't fret if you're reading the book after that date ― you can add to the discussion at any time!

Our current Book of the Moment is...

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi!

Quote:

AGE RATING: Sa13+
GENRE: NON-FICTION
SUMMARY: (from Goodreads)

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.

SPOILER!!: CONTENT WARNINGS!

Death (natural causes), cancer, descriptions of medical procedures.

• All Book Club Rules and SnitchSeeker Board Rules apply in this thread.
• You can discuss anything related to When Breath Becomes Air in here. Spoilers ARE allowed and we encourage you to avoid using spoiler tabs where possible because it helps the discussion flow better.
• If you want to talk about your reading progress in a spoiler-free environment, this thread is the place for that.
• This discussion will be active until June 30th. That being said, the thread will remain open for everyone to discuss the book after that time, too.

• Feeling inspired? Why not contribute some When Breath Becomes Air art to our Bookish Fan Art thread?

Ready, Set, Read!