Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: please look after mom

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First female author wins Man Asian Literary Prize

Please Look After Mom has won the Man Asian Literary Prize, making its author Kyung-Sook Shin the first woman to win this prestigious award for works by Asian authors that are available in English. The book follows the efforts of a family to find the mother who went missing from Seoul Station and their sobering realizations when they recall memories that suggest she may not have been happy. The book has sold nearly 2 million copies in its native South Korea alone, a country with a population of only 50 million people. For full details on this award, click here.

Debut novel The Orphan Master's Son

Start the year off with a newly-published debut novel that's been generating serious buzz. In The Orphan Master's Son, Pak Jun Do, the son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father, runs an orphan work camp. Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. By the author of Parasites Like Us. Enjoy stories set in Korea? You can also try the 2011 bestseller Please Look After Mom.

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