Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: beach read

Heading to the beach? Swing by the Community Library and pick up a great book to read while you soak up the sun! Why not try The Rumor by Elin Hilderbrand?

Madeline King and Grace Pancik are best friends and the envy of Nantucket for their perfect marriages, their beautiful kids, their Sunday night double dates with their devoted husbands. But this summer, somethings changed, and if there's anything Nantucket likes better than cocktails on the beach at sunset, it's a good rumor. (Publisher Summary)

"Best-selling Hilderbrand (The Beach Club; The Castaways) has become synonymous with the perfect summer beach read, and The Rumor should find its way into many beach bags this summer. Readers will be hooked as they get a glimpse into the messy lives of the beautiful people who only seem to have it all on this island." (LJ Express Reviews)

Set against dramatic Mediterranean Sea views and lush olive groves, The Rocks opens with a confrontation and a secret: What was the mysterious, catastrophic event that drove two honeymooners apart so suddenly and absolutely in 1948 that they never spoke again despite living on the same island for sixty more years? And how did their history shape the Romeo and Juliet–like romance of their (unrelated) children decades later?

Centered around a popular seaside resort club and its community, The Rocks is a double love story that begins with a mystery, then moves backward in time, era by era, to unravel what really happened decades earlier. (Publisher Summary)

"With its large cast of eccentrics and their ever-shifting relationships, The Rocks feels a bit like the literary equivalent of a good Netflix binge: a guilty pleasure well-crafted enough that you don’t actually have to feel guilty about it." BookPage Reviews

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

Beach Read

Cultured Beach Read