Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Big Titles This Month

And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini: Khaled Hosseini's debut novel, The Kite Runner, was one of the Best Books of the Last Decade. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, was equally acclaimed. In both these stories, Hosseini brought to life characters in Afghanistan, helping humanize for many Americans the people and places where we were at war post-9/11.

Inferno by Dan Brown: Inferno is Dan Brown's next Robert Langdon thriller, following The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol.

Dead After After by Charlaine Harris: The thirteenth and last installment in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series is set for release this month. Dead Ever After will close the series that started with Dead Until Dark and inspired the hit HBO series True Blood.

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

Big Titles This Month

No comments:

Post a Comment