Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: doomsday

Showing posts with label doomsday. Show all posts

Debut Released Today: Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

Set in the not-too-distant future, Robopocalypse tells the thrilling story of a sentient computer program that escapes from the lab and leads a robot uprising against humankind. This exciting debut from new author Daniel H. Wilson is currently being turned into a feature film directed by Steven Spielberg. Check Robopocalypse out from your Community Library to ensure bragging rights among your friends for having discovered this new literary talent first.

New Release: America Pacifica by Anna North

For fans of doomsday novels like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, this debut novel about one of the last habitable places on Earth may be a good next read. After an Ice Age descends upon the planet, the fictional island America Pacifica is one of the last places that supports human life. It doesn't take long for a strict heirarchy to establish itself, with ordinary people like Sarah and her 18-year-old daughter Darcy at the bottom eating jellyfish and seaweed while a privileged few at the top dine on steak and potatoes. When Sarah mysteriously goes missing, Darcy discovers that her mother is involved in a clandestine resistance movement, and that nothing will ever be the same for either mother or daughter on this postapocalyptic island nation of American Pacifica.

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