Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: joanne fluke

Showing posts with label joanne fluke. Show all posts

Latest Hannah Swensen mystery (with recipes): 'Cinnamon Roll Murder'

Attention culinary mystery readers: the latest book in the "Hannah Swensen" series by Joanne Fluke, Cinnamon Roll Murder, has just been released. When the keyboard player for the Cinnamon Roll Six jazz band is murdered after a tour bus accident on the way to Lake Eden, Minnesota, Hannah Swensen, after digging up several local suspects, discovers that there is nothing sweeter than catching a killer. This book is the 15th in the series, following Devil's Food Cake Murder; the series started in the year 2000 with Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.

What authors would you invite for Thanksgiving dinner?

Thanksgiving is tomorrow; if you could invite any author (living or dead) to join you, who would it be & why? Here's one librarian's list:

Joanne Fluke (Devil's Food Cake Murder) - because she'd bring one heckuva dessert.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice) - because she died a spinster after having written some of the best love stories of all time, and I've always wanted to ask her about her own love life
Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings) - because he's just a great writer who will always be welcome at my dinner table

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