Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Book Recommendation


As most of you know I am an avid book reader, and most of what I read is a bunch of crazy fiction. But I came across This book called "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. I would recommend this book to anyone. And if you want to watch the last lecture, here is the web address, http://www.thelastlecture.com/, the link is on the sidebar. And although the lecture is an hour long, I think it's worth it.
Here is the Summery or Synopsis or what ever you call it, I kinda borrowed it from the Barnes & Noble web page because they say it way better than I could have, and it would have taken me forever to type.

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
—Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.