Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: caught reading

Showing posts with label caught reading. Show all posts

Caught Reading

Community Library member Antoinette L. was recently talking with librarian in the true crime section (362), and shared an enthusiastic recommendation for Cruel Death. In this true story, a college-educated woman and her Navy SEAL husband rob, murder, and dismember two vacationers in Ocean City, Maryland. Read all about the crime and its aftermath in Cruel Death by M. William Phelps. If you like it, though, you may have to get in line behind Antoinette to check out other books by this true crime author...

Presidential Reading

Ever wonder what the nation's Commander-in-Chief reads? This info-graphic from The Daily Beast documents the books President Obama has read since starting his campaign in 2008. How many of them have you read?

Caught Reading: Candy Cane Murder

Tis the season for cozying up with a good book, and Joanne Fluke's culinary mysteries are a great way to do exactly that. A patron just snapped up Candy Cane Murder for his niece, and both copies of Gingerbread Cookie Murder are checked out, but as of this writing the audiobook versions of Plum Pudding Murder are still available, as are regular print, large print, and ebook versions of Sugar Cookie Murder. Non-Christmas titles are also on the shelf; Fluke's popular Hannah Swenson culinary mystery series starts with Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.

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