The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Title
The Last Lecture
Author
Randy Pausch
Publisher
Hyperion
Price
RM34.90
Rating
5/5

I could have finished reading this book ages ago but I had difficulties reading it. It is not the grammar. It is not the sentence construction. It is not the choice of words. But during the first half of the book....it never failed to make me cry. Somewhere in between, it made me laugh. The second last chapter made me cry again. :| I don't know if it is just me but I find it extremely sad when I put myself in his shoes and imagine if it was me who has to go through all that. He made me feel atleast half of what he felt. He wrote this book for his children but it is definitely meant for all.

In this book, he covered his childhood, his beliefs and ...... This guy has very strong determination, pure computer scientist (as in his thinking and stuff), academic-oriented and multitasks as much as he could. Then again...he pretty much got luck on his side.

Here are some sayings in the book which I love.

"When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do."
-author's female colleague-

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
-Seneca, Roman philosopher-

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."
-the author-

He had also mention crayons in one of the topics. He is soooooo right about the crayons. I thought I was the only one feeling that way....apparently,I'm not odd. He said that smelling a crayon reminds people of their childhood. It definitely does that!!!! Well, I'm not a big fan of crayons. I hate crayons coz I don't think it could cover a picture well like colour pencils and yeah, I'm no artist. At the age 11, i fell in love with oil pastels coz I could contol them better and could tone them pretty well when I fill in the pictures with colours. :)

I don't know why I took so long to start reading this book. I bought 2 copies of it in May last year; one for myself and another one as a gift to a friend. He loves it. Recently, my bf read it and he loves it too. I thought he was still surviving out there til I googled up his name and got onto Wikipedia and read that he died in July 2008. That's juz about 2 months after I bought the book.

A bookworm-friend of mine asked what is special about this book and if it is similar to Tuesday's with Morrie. Well, it is different. Morrie shared the important things in life. Randy shared stuff about himself which he solely dedicated to his kids. Just like its title...it is a lecture. He should have written more stuff.... *sobsobsob*

The fact that he's from Carnegie Mellon makes me wanna read even more. And yea...his field is Computer Science. :) Love his fun part. His determination. His way of handling little stuff in life which we often make big fuss about. It is such a pity he couldn't be there for his kids and it is sad that his kids are too young to remember ALL. I don't think he has any regrets but I still feel if he had settled down earlier and have kids, it would have been a lot better...then again, who am I to question fate.

Wanna trace him on the cyberworld?
Here are some links.

Randy Pausch on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch

Randy's Posts on his CMU news page
http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html

Randy's list of new on University of Virginia
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/csnews/news.php?ID=36

A page with some of the links to Randy's YouTube clips
http://www.speakwell.com/well/2008summer/speaker.php

Anyway, this is the book I think I'd read over and over again. You may wonder where is the pic with the floral background. Well, my bestfriend borrowed my only cam....so I guess the pic will come in later unless I know where the other cams in the house are. =p

p/s: Don't judge a book by its cover!