Last Lecture
Last Lecture
Don’t judge a book by its cover. You hear that expression all the time. However, it couldn’t be applied greater than the book titled, “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. When I first looked at the book, I expected to encounter a story filled with nothing but sadness. However, after reading this National Bestseller, I found that I had discovered a tale of life. “The Last Lecture” documents the life of Randy Pausch in the form of short stories that exemplified the kind of man he lived as. Pausch’s ability to share those stories on paper with the world was quite impressive. His story-telling ability was perhaps the most positive aspect of the book. Each “mini-lesson” consisted of an attention grabbing opening, much like we are required to do in this book review (hopefully I have succeeded). For example, “We've placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people's rights. That's how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities”. Having a sentence that is quite plain and simple but at the same time extremely thought provoking helped to pull me into every chapter. After an attention grabbing opening, Pausch continued to draw us in with tales of humor and light mischief. Although some of his stories deviated off topic, every detail enhanced the end result of the lesson learned. Ultimately, Mr. Pausch chose to write and present his “last lecture” for his children. The book was extremely positive despite the fact that the man writing it knew that he had very little time left to live. At the end of each short story, Pausch summed up the series of events that it consisted of and left us with a lesson learned in couple sentences. Those couple sentence at the end of each chapter proved to hold much more value than their length, however. Pausch left us with this at the end of one story, “ No job is beneath you. You ought to be thrilled you got a job in the mailroom. And when
Don’t judge a book by its cover. You hear that expression all the time. However, it couldn’t be applied greater than the book titled, “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. When I first looked at the book, I expected to encounter a story filled with nothing but sadness. However, after reading this National Bestseller, I found that I had discovered a tale of life. “The Last Lecture” documents the life of Randy Pausch in the form of short stories that exemplified the kind of man he lived as. Pausch’s ability to share those stories on paper with the world was quite impressive. His story-telling ability was perhaps the most positive aspect of the book. Each “mini-lesson” consisted of an attention grabbing opening, much like we are required to do in this book review (hopefully I have succeeded). For example, “We've placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people's rights. That's how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities”. Having a sentence that is quite plain and simple but at the same time extremely thought provoking helped to pull me into every chapter. After an attention grabbing opening, Pausch continued to draw us in with tales of humor and light mischief. Although some of his stories deviated off topic, every detail enhanced the end result of the lesson learned. Ultimately, Mr. Pausch chose to write and present his “last lecture” for his children. The book was extremely positive despite the fact that the man writing it knew that he had very little time left to live. At the end of each short story, Pausch summed up the series of events that it consisted of and left us with a lesson learned in couple sentences. Those couple sentence at the end of each chapter proved to hold much more value than their length, however. Pausch left us with this at the end of one story, “ No job is beneath you. You ought to be thrilled you got a job in the mailroom. And when