When Breath Becomes Air
At your speed≈ 5 hrs
Pages256
Audiobook≈ 8½ hrs
256 pages works out to roughly 77,000 words. At an average 250 words a minute that is 5 hrs — a weekend's reading.
Readers on Hardcover rate it 4.36 out of 5, from 920 ratings.
How long does it take to read When Breath Becomes Air?
When Breath Becomes Air is 256 pages, or roughly 77,000 words. How long that takes depends on how fast you read:
| Your pace | Words per minute | Time to finish |
|---|---|---|
| Slow | 175 | 7½ hrs |
| Average | 250 | 5 hrs |
| Fast | 400 | 3 hrs |
Estimated at about 300 words per page. Most adults read between 200 and 300 words a minute — use the reading-speed control to set your own pace and every time on the site adjusts.
Every reading time on the site updates to your pace. Page counts are an estimate, so treat the hours as a good guide, not a stopwatch.
Common questions
- How long does it take to read When Breath Becomes Air?
- About 5 hrs at an average reading speed of 250 words per minute. When Breath Becomes Air runs 256 pages, roughly 77,000 words — so at a slower 175 wpm it is nearer 7½ hrs, and at 400 wpm closer to 3 hrs.
- How many pages is When Breath Becomes Air?
- 256 pages, which is about 77,000 words and 5 hrs of reading. Editions vary, so we take the figure two of our three sources agree on.
- Is When Breath Becomes Air worth reading?
- Readers on Hardcover rate it 4.36 out of 5, from 920 ratings. What we can tell you for certain is the cost: 256 pages and about 5 hrs of your time, or 3 hrs if you read quickly. Whether that is worth it depends on the hours you have.
- How long is the When Breath Becomes Air audiobook?
- About 8½ hrs, estimated from the 77,000 words at a typical narration pace of 150 words a minute. Real editions vary by narrator, usually by well under an hour.
From the publisher
For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question 'What makes a life worth living?'
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a…
neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both