Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Quality new nonfiction at your Community Library

Looking for some high-quality new nonfiction from Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library? Perhaps you'd like try one of these two books, which both earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly:

Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep - Examines the complex world of sleep and discusses whether or not women sleep differently than men and if killing someone while sleepwalking would count as murder.
Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy - Analyzes scandals in high-profile institutions, from Wall Street and the Catholic Church to Major League Baseball, while evaluating how an elite American meritocracy rose throughout the past half-century before succumbing to corruption and failure.

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

Quality new nonfiction at your Community Library

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