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.

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.