Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Live By Night Wins Edgar Award

Dennis Lehane's Live By Night has been awarded the 2013 Edgar Award for best novel beating out Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl in what has been deemed a literary upset. From Shutter Island to Mystic River , Lehane’s suspenseful writing has established him as far more than a Boston crime writer. His books are almost guaranteed movies and, sure enough, Ben Affleck is set to produce Live by Night on screen. Live by Night is the second in a trilogy about a Boston family of Irish lawmen and it tells the tale of Joe Coughlin’s rise from thief to gangster in the Prohibition Era. Check out a copy at your Community Library today!

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

Live By Night Wins Edgar Award

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