We will be discussing "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi. Copies of this month's book can be picked up from the West Indianapolis Branch. Adults are invited to this free monthly book discussion program. We meet on the second Monday of the month.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is available as a print book, an eBook, a downloadable audiobook, an audiobook CD, in Large Print, and a book club kit in the Library's collection.
"At the age of 36, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi's health began to falter. He started losing weight and was wracked by waves of excruciating back pain. A CT scan confirmed what Paul, deep down, had suspected: he had stage four lung cancer, widely disseminated. One day, he was a doctor making a living treating the dying, and the next, he was a patient struggling to live. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined, the culmination of decades of striving, evaporated. Breath Becomes Air approaches the questions raised by facing mortality from the dual perspective of the neurosurgeon who spent a decade meeting patients in the twilight between life and death, and the terminally ill patient who suddenly found himself living in that liminality. At the base of Paul's inquiry are essential questions such as: What makes life worth living in the face of death? What happens when the future, instead of being a ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present? When faced with a terminal diagnosis, what does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another one fades away?"
The first West Indianapolis Branch opened in 1897, following the annexation of West Indianapolis into the city of Indianapolis. A new building on West Morris Street, constructed with funds from a $120,000 grant by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, opened in 1912 and served the community until 1986, when the current 5,000-square-foot branch began service on South Kappes Street.
