Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: New Thanksgiving Stories

Looking for a few Thanksgiving themed stories? Check out these new releases:

Death Rides Again by Janice Hamrick: This cozy mystery, the third in the Jocelyn Shore mystery series, finds Texas high-school teacher Jocelyn Shore's family Thanksgiving disrupted by violent disputes involving a cousin's imminent divorce, which is further complicated by a disappearance, a murder and numerous suspects.

Want Not by Jonathan Miles is a compulsively readable, deeply human novel that charts the course of three intersecting lives—a freegan couple living off the grid in Manhattan, a once prominent linguist struggling with midlife, and a New Jersey debt-collection magnate with a new family and a second chance at getting things right—in a thoroughly contemporary examination of that most basic and unquenchable emotion: want.

Skating Under the Wire by Joelle Charbonneau: When a dead body turns up at her best friend's bridal shower, Rebecca Robbins, while trying to cook Thanksgiving dinner and track down the thieves responsible for a string of home invasions, must solve a murder and get her friend safely married with the help of her Elvis-loving grandmother. This cozy mystery is the fourth in the Rebecca Robbins Mystery series.

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 Thanksgiving Stories

No comments:

Post a Comment