“The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch
I just read this book for the second time and still found it very interesting and uplifting. Professors often give a “last lecture” at the end of their illustrious careers. Randy Pausch, a tenured professor at Carnegie-Mellon, gave his when he was in his late forties and dying with pancreatic cancer. He had many reasons to give this lecture to an overflow crowd of over 400, but his real audience was his three young children. His talk covered things he wanted his children to know one day because they were too young to remember him and all the love he had for them.
It is a beautiful true story that I think any of us can learn important lessons from, but if you aren’t inclined to read the book you can hear and see Pausch give his Last Lecture on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7zzQpvoYcQ
Crooked Creek by Sue Mattingly 