Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: bird sisters

Readers and book clubs - looking for books about sisters and sisterhood? In the new book, The Gilly Salt Sisters, two sisters on Cape Cod fight over an eligibile bachelor. In another work of domestic fiction, The Bird Sisters, two elderly sisters tend to injured birds and reminisce about the past. For a higher-octane pick, try the suspenseful thriller Come and Find Me, in which a female computer expert must end her self-imposed exile in order to rescue her kidnapped sister. Meanwhile, those who like their sister stories with an Asian flavor can try Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country or Lisa See's Shanghai Girls. Stop by Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library for more great book suggestions on this (and other) topics.

Check out or reserve these new fictional titles! (Or subscribe to your Community Library's NextReads service to get a monthly emails about the new releases in the genres that interest you.) In Touch, a pastor in the woods of northern Canada must confront inner demons to gain inner peace. Friendship Bread and The Bird Sisters both explore the relationship between sisters, the former from the perspective of younger women and the latter from older women's. The bestselling book The Uncoupling asks what would happen if all women in one town just stopped having sex one day. Finally, Gone with a Handsomer Man is a culinary murder mystery/romance about an out-of-work pastry chef who must turn to her lawyer ex-boyfriend for help when she is accused of killing her fiancee.

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

Books on sisters

New Fiction