I’ve had “When Breath Becomes Air” sitting at our cabin for a while, but decided to pick it up and read it on winter break. The book is a memoir by Paul Kalanithi told in two parts. The first part is his path through medical school and becoming a neurosurgeon, being close to serious illnesses, and dealing with death as a Doctor. The second part is after his cancer diagnosis with stage IV lung cancer, which causes his death within 18 months.

There were two things that struck a chord in me while reading this.

I kept thinking back to Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. I’m sure it was in part because Kalanithi, like Gawande, is a Doctor. The first part of the book had many references to the Doctor’s perspective when diagnosing a patient with a terminal illness. This book did too. Being Mortal is a very different book, and one that I highly recommend reading, but this touched on similar topics with a more personal perspective.

The other thing about this book was more personal. It reminded me in so many ways of the path of my friend David Hussman, who passed away earlier this year. He had the same diagnosis, stage IV lung cancer. I’m pretty sure he even had the same EGFR mutation and received similar treatments. Similar to Kalanithi, he did remarkably well for a long while after getting treatment. Enough that you could kind of forget a bit. But the cancer is just held back a bit. I was wishing I would have read this book when I got it, as it would have given me some deeper perspective when talking with David.

A while back at one of my book club meetings John Riedl mentioned the author Tracy Kidder. I expressed my ignorance and he was dumbfounded. “You haven’t read Kidder? Soul of a New Machine? You have to read it.” His conviction was strong enough that I figured I needed to read it and rectify this horrific literary gap. I finished it today, and really enjoyed the book.

To start with, Soul of a New Machine is not a technical book. You do not need to know anything about computers to read this book. Also, this book was originally published in 1981. This is a time when “super-minis” were just coming out and the computer industry was jumping to 32-bit architectures. This is four years before the introduction of the first Macintosh computer. I would recommend this book to my technical friends for the same reason I would recommend Steven Levy’s Hackers (1984), Cliff Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg (1990) or Out of the Inner Circle (1984). There is a great depth of history and culture in this book that is worthwhile and reminds us of the roots of our profession. We still see these roots playing out today in nearly all computer related industries. Thirty years ago it was displayed by wire-wrapping boards to make CPU’s, today it’s shown in mashups. The world of programming and computer engineering, despite what many might think, is filled with passion and creativity.

Soul of a New Machine chronicles the development of a new 32-bit computer from Data General called the Eagle (or the Data General Eclipse MV/8000). Kidder does an excellent job of telling a compelling story of how this machine comes to life and dives into the stories of the people that make it. He concludes that a computer isn’t just a machine, but represents the ideas and personalities of those that create it. He’s spot on.

Kidder illuminates the culture that has filled computer labs, computer science departments, technology, and now Internet startups for years. A born-desire to solve the unsolvable. The unstoppable desire to know how something works.

As I read Soul of a New Machine I could draw parallels to products that I had worked on in a variety of different roles. It was amusing to see that while almost all the tools have changed, so much of the “how” and the “why” has stayed the same.

I finished Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer this evening. It was enjoyable to both start and finish this book during our stay at Glacier National Park. Reading that much is just one of the joys of not having any television or Internet access in our cabin. I was excited to read this book after having watched the movie version of Into the Wild. My friend Kent lent me his copy of the book and it’s already been passed on to Tammy to read before returning to Kent.

First off, this is a really enjoyable book and just like the other Krakauer book I’ve read, Into Thin Air, this is a real page turner. Even a slow reader like myself can’t help but finish it quickly, picking it up at every opportunity to see what happens next.

For a full review of the book or to dive into it’s topics, check out the Amazon reviews or just read it yourself. I think most people will enjoy it.

The whole story of Chris McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, really grabbed me. Kent and I talked about this at some length because he had the same reaction. His story is beyond interesting, and I find it impossible to think about his story without also reflecting on my own life. I think that there is something about the ferocity that Alex lived and dreamt that makes me, something.

That’s the thing about Alex’s story. On one hand, he’s incredibly selfish. His entire pursuit is so inwardly focused and causes a lot of pain for most anyone that got close to him. He goes completely off the deep end, and in the end loses his life foolishly. With some basic preparation and know how he probably would have survived his ordeal in the Alaskan Interior and nobody would have ever heard of Alexander Supertramp.

But even with those negatives, you feel a sense of admiration for the young man. A sense of pride. Or even a sense of shame for not having the courage or discipline to pursue something the way that he did, or even a fraction of the way that he did.

Have any of you read this book? I would be curious to know what you thought of it and what your reaction was. I think that Chris’ story is going to sit with me for a while.