Literature #2

Some updates on my literary endeavors:

• I’ve put Gravity’s Rainbow aside. I truly appreciate that this is the style of writing that some people enjoy, but by God, it’s so convoluted. Back to the shelf.
• I finished When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi over the course of two nights, and found myself crying myself to sleep at the ending. I can’t remember the last time I was so emotionally caught up in a book. In brief, a brilliant Stanford neurosurgeon and polymath (Paul himself) is diagnosed with stage 4 terminal lung cancer in his early 30s, before even really getting a chance to explore his own medical and scientific potential to change the world. This book is Paul’s homage to medicine and his (brief) philosophical exploration of purpose, life, and death, and how those three intertwined in his own life, prior to his passing.

I’ve started reading:

• The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
  • I’m only two chapters in but I’m hooked. It actually reminds me quite viscerally of Saramago’s Blindness

Still reading:

• The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco

Favorite recent new words and quotes:

• matutinal – of or occuring in the morning
• marcescent – withering but staying attached to the stem
• “A little learning is a dangerous thing, drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring” – Alexander Pope, as quoted in When Breath Becomes Air. The Pierian Springs of Macedonia were springs sacred to the Greek muses, and the metaphorical source of knowledge in art and science. It resonated with me because it aptly describes my learning style. When something new catches my eye, I dig and explore deeply. I’m not satisfied with superficial understanding – I need to know the mechanisms, the relationships, the relevance.