Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Valentine's Day Reads

Check out these Valetine-y reads, but be warned - not all of these are fluffy happily-ever-after stories.

Death of a Valentine - Announcing his engagement to associate Josie McSween, police sergeant and once-confirmed bachelor Hamish Macbeth struggles with prenuptial jitters while investigating the murder of a woman whose increasingly complicated case introduced him to his fiancée.
Brava, Valentine - A once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity takes shoe designer and businesswoman Valentine Roncalli from the winding streets of Greenwich Village to the sun-kissed cobblestones of Buenos Aires, where she finds a long-buried secret hidden deep within a family scandal.
Bloody Valentine - Presents three tales of love, passion, and heartbreak featuring various Blue Blood vampires and the Red Blood humans who keep them alive, including Oliver, Allegra, and Schuyler.
Tycoon's Valentine Vendetta - Back home in New Zealand to regroup when her high-fashion modeling career slides into oblivion, Lily Fontaine is drawn once again to successful Jack Dolan, her teenage love, unaware not only that she doesn't know the entire truth about their decade-old breakup but that Jack is out for revenge.
My Nerdy Valentine - Aspiring psychologist Amanda Rykowsky is delighted to receive anonymous love notes, until the messages begin to take a sinister turn, and enlists stockbroker William Sloan to masquerade as her lover to uncover the culprit.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

Valentine's Day Reads

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