A couple of the newspapers have obituaries for Randy Pausch, who died a few days ago. He is famous for his "last lecture" given following a diagnosis of cancer last year in which he discussed "life, the universe, and everything". Like 10m others, I saw the lecture on Youtube. There is no doubt that it is a powerful performance and one that I found very moving at the time - it joins several other pieces of work that have been important to me since my dad died of cancer a couple of years ago. For instance, Joan Dideon's "Year of Magical Thinking".
I haven't read the book that he also produced in his last few months. But anything that emphasises the power of dreaming, the transcience of material possessions and the fruitlessness of complaining has got to be good. No doubt it would fit in well with my recent re-reading of Tom Hodgkinson's "How to be free"
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