The best memoirs of all time including Michelle Obama's Becoming, Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air, Chanel Miller's Know My Name and Patricia Lockwood's Priestdaddy.

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Reading lists

The best memoirs of all time, as chosen by our readers

Paul Kalanithi

A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living.

Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.

A great, indelible book ... as intimate and illuminating as Atul Gawande&rsquo;s &ldquo;Being Mortal,&rdquo; to cite only one recent example of a doctor&rsquo;s book that has had exceptionally wide appeal ... I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option ... gripping from the start ... None of it is maudlin. Nothing is exaggerated. As he wrote to a friend: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just tragic enough and just imaginable enough.&rdquo; And just important enough to be unmissable.

Less a memoir than a reflection on life and purpose&hellip; A vital book.

Extraordinary...Remarkable... luminous, revelatory memoir about mortality and what makes being alive meaningful ... Lyrical, intimate, insistent and profound. Kalanithi had the mind of the polymath and the ear of a poet.

Powerful and poignant&hellip; Elegantly written posthumous memoir&hellip; Should be compulsory for anyone who intends to be a doctor&hellip; A profound reflection on the meaning of life.

A stark, fascinating, well-written and heroic memoir.

When I came to the end of the last flawless paragraph of When Breath Becomes Air, all I could do was turn to the first page and read the whole thing again. Searingly intelligent, beautifully written, and beyond brave, I haven't been so marked by a book in years.

A remarkable book&hellip; Kalanithi writes very well, in a plain and matter-of-fact way, without a trace of self-pity, and you are immediately gripped and carried along&hellip; [He] was clearly a deeply thoughtful and compassionate man, and his death is a great loss to medicine, but at least he has left this remarkable book behind.

A meditation on what makes a life worth living.

It turns out not really to be about dying at all but about life and how to live it &mdash; though the closeness of death gives it an urgency and economy&hellip; When Breath Becomes Air is a Renaissance book from a Renaissance man. It is a work of philosophy and morality, a reconciliation of science and religion. There is even plot and excitement&hellip; It was only with the restrained, elegant epilogue written by his wife Lucy Kalanithi that I found myself weeping helplessly&hellip; When Breath Becomes Air tells us what means to live a good life, by giving us a glimpse into an exceptional one.

An astonishingly affecting memoir and eloquent examination of what it is to be human and confront your own mortality&hellip; This is a remarkable book by a man who was driven by his passion for his life, his loves and his career. His death is undoubtedly a tragedy but in writing this memoir he has guaranteed that his voice and the important story it tells will resonate for years to come.

As thought-provoking as it was moving. The sheer exuberance of Kalnithi&rsquo;s intellectual curiosity shone through in his writing.

Dr Kalanithi describes, clearly and simply, and entirely without self-pity, his journey from innocent medical student to professionally detached and all-powerful neurosurgeon to helpless patient, dying from cancer. He learns lessons about the reality of illness and the doctor-patient relationship that most doctors only learn in old age but Paul Kalanithi died at the tragically early age of 37. 
 
Every doctor should read this book - written by a member of our own tribe, it helps us understand and overcome the barriers we all erect between ourselves and our patients as soon as we are out of medical school

To the venerable canon of doctors who could write (from Chekhov to Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande), another name can be added: that of Paul Kalanithi&hellip; Brilliantly written.

Paul Kalanithi&rsquo;s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air&hellip; split my head open with its beauty. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

Thanks to When Breath Becomes Air, those of us who never met Paul Kalanithi will both mourn his death and benefit from his life. This one of a handful of books I consider to be a universal donor - I would recommend it to anyone, everyone.

A remarkable book about what it means to live&hellip;a tour de force&hellip;The book will be compared inevitably to Sacks&rsquo; work and also to the iconic book that Joan Didion wrote about grief, The Year of Magical Thinking. And like that book, it&rsquo;s destined to become an elegiac classic on the subject of mortality. But it&rsquo;s a different feeling from Didion&rsquo;s gorgeous, melancholy fog of war. When Breath Becomes Air is electrically alive in its anticipation of death.

It is [his wife] Lucy who completes the book with an honesty and elegance that echoes his own&hellip; This book goes a long way to achieving what Kalanithi wanted to achieve &ndash; helping people understand death and face their mortality. He emerges as a fine man who faced his own with fortitude and integrity.

Eloquent, elegant, heartbreaking memoir&hellip; As [Kalanithi] courageously faces his death, he takes care to celebrate love and hope in this sorrowful but ultimately life-affirming book.

It's a story so remarkable, so stunning, and so affecting that I had to take dozens of breaks just to compose myself enough to get through it&hellip;Although you know how this one ends, you still can't believe it. That's because the author -- a nonsmoker whose cancer was the result of a genetic mutation -- is so likeable, so relatable, and so humble, that you become immersed in his world and forget where it's all heading. It occurs to me, as I close this book again (but not for the final time), that when I'm next on rounds in the hospital, I will have something devastating and spectacular to recommend.

[A]n emotional investment well work making: a moving and thoughtful memoir of family, medicine and literature&hellip;His words are bracing for their honesty. He also writes beautifully about the philosophical aspect of medicine, neurosurgery in particular.

It would be hard to conceive of a more tragic story... Kalanithi provides a uniquely valuable perspective... [He] writes with eloquence, humour and honesty from both sides of the medical fence. His prose is fluid and precise, enlivened by brisk dialogue and offbeat anecdotes, mixing a surgeon's precision with a human touch... Filled to the brim...with joy, humour and meaning.

Devastating account of the shift from doctor to patient.

A deeply thoughtful and beautifully written book on the question of what makes life worth living.

Kalanithi was a brilliant writer with a profound mind&hellip; The medical stories are endlessly gripping&hellip; But the book&rsquo;s true beauty emerges when Kalanithi&rsquo;s illness turns him from doctor to patient, facing death &ldquo;eye to eye&rdquo; with profound integrity and sometimes humour.

[Paul Kalanithi&rsquo;s] chapters are about the triumph of the mind, of ambition, of determination over cancer in the final months of life; [Lucy Kalanithi&rsquo;s] are about the triumph of the heart.

[It] tops my longlist of books I&rsquo;d like for Christmas.

Through reading this book I have looked the bogeyman death in the face. Maybe it was the briefest of glances, and I want to play a little before I look again, but I feel richer for it. It is a sombre richness and there is sadness in it, but I am grateful. Grateful for this book and to its valiant author.

His exquisitely written, inspiring memoir is inevitably unfinished, but delivers the final word on dying with dignity.

Wrenching memoir&hellip;Moving, humble and impossible to ignore.

An unforgettable reflection on the practice of medicine and the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

Deeply moving memoir&hellip; Lessons on life and how to cherish it.

The effect of reading such clear-sighted and intelligent commentary on life and death is exhilarating&hellip; Astonishing and invigorating book... Rarely have words on both life and death made such an impact.

A sad but beautiful story&hellip; A remarkable book&hellip; A moving and thoughtful memoir of family, medicine and literature.

Profoundly moving book&hellip; A life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

[Kalanithi] wrote about practising medicine, about mortality, about finite time, with unfathomable tranquility and humour.

He writes with clarity, elegance, and honesty&hellip; When Breath Becomes Air is a deeply personal and moving book&hellip; Kalanithi died leaving the book unfinished. He left, though, his voice, speaking through this book about death and implicitly about life.

Writing isn't brain surgery, but it's rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former... A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

Wrenching memoir&hellip; Moving, humble, and impossible to ignore.

A sparely lyrical account of excruciated ambition&hellip; Fairly dotted with insights.

Kalanithi&rsquo;s brilliance shines off every page&hellip; with language that is crystalline in its truthfulness, Kalanithi charts the ups and downs of the last months of his life&hellip; Searingly intelligent, beautifully written and beyond brave.

In this slim but extraordinarily powerful memoir, Kalanithi grapples with the hardest questions with grace and courage... Lucid, humbling and heartbreaking.

Beautifully written&hellip; Healthcare professionals and civilians alike should find much that resonates here.

A gripping and emotionally charged account.

When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

Far more than a beautifully written account of a life cut cruelly short: it is a meditation on living well.

[H]e writes with an eloquence that befits his love of the literary.

He writes movingly about how to make sense of a life so suddenly interrupted and what makes life worth living even as it fades away. A beautiful book about the resilience of the human spirit.

Informative, emotive, honest and a stark look at the path one takes when life pulls the rug out from under you.

This book has stayed with me ever since I put it down. Absolutely extraordinary. This book is an example of how fragile and unfair life can be.

Poignant and life-affirming, it's a devastating must-read

Beautifully written... utterly heartbreaking and yet somehow life-affirming

Mike Gayle, author of THE MUSEUM OF ORDINARY PEOPLE

The writing is beautiful and the whole book feels like a wondrous gift

A devastating yet wonderfully life-affirming treatise on confronting our own mortality, it&rsquo;s a memoir which belongs on all bookshelves

Evening Standard, *Best Memoirs of All Times*

At a time when the NHS and key workers are doing their utmost to make sure people are safe, this medical memoir is one that will make you realise how courageous and hard-working our medical staff really are... The moving and intimidate book brings readers on a valuable and gut-wrenching journey through the meaning of life, exposes universal truths surrounding terminal illnesses and highlights the fragile relationship between doctor and patient

** SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER** 
 
 'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal 
 
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. 
 
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father. 
 
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? 
 
Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both. 
 
 'A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living' Nigella Lawson

Paul Kalanithi

Praise for When Breath Becomes Air

A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living.

Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.

A great, indelible book ... as intimate and illuminating as Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” to cite only one recent example of a doctor’s book that has had exceptionally wide appeal ... ...

A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living.

Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.

A great, indelible book ... as intimate and illuminating as Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” to cite only one recent example of a doctor’s book that has had exceptionally wide appeal ... ...

A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living.

Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.

A great, indelible book ... as intimate and illuminating as Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” to cite only one recent example of a doctor’s book that has had exceptionally wide appeal ... ...

Articles featuring Paul Kalanithi

The best memoirs of all time, as chosen by our readers

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