Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: New Beach Reads

Plan on heading to Smith Point Park this weekend? Stop by the Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library on your way to check out one of these great new beach-bum reads.

I Couldn't Love You More by Jillian Medoff - Enjoying a fulfilling if precariously balanced life with her partner, daughter and two stepdaughters, Eliot Gordon finds her children and everything she has worked for threatened by the arrival of her long-lost first love and a shocking chain of events.
The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Doran Barbieri - Humiliated by her husband's infidelity, forty-year-old Nora Keane, married to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts, takes refuge with her maternal aunt on Burke's Island off the coast of Maine.
Skinnydipping by Bethenny Frankel - A tale loosely based on the author's early adulthood follows the experiences of a struggling actress and outspoken businesswoman whose ambitions lead her through several high-profile relationships.
Beach House Memories by Mary Alice Monroe - A tale set in the 1970s American South shares the story of Lovie Rutledge, who reflects on a summer during which a beach vacation to escape her unfaithful, disdainful husband culminates in a fateful romance with a handsome biologist.
Barefoot in the Sand by Roxanne St. Claire - When she decides to build a hotel on Mimosa Key after a hurricane destroys her home, Lacey Armstrong is distracted from her goal by architect Clay Walker, who is in desperate need of a job as he tries to get his life back on track.

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

New Beach Reads

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