Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: snowman

In this first installment of a newly-translated series of Danish thrillers, Red Cross nurse Nina Borg retrieves a suitcase from the Copenhagen train station, discovering to her shock that its contents is a drugged three-year-old boy. Too scared to go to the police, Nina risks her life to protect the child in this high-adrenaline novel, which is on Goodreads' featured November "Movers and Shakers" list. Fans of other Scandinavian crime writers such as Stieg Larsson (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Jo Nesbo (The Snowman), and Lars Kepler (The Hypnotist) will especially enjoy this latest series to cross the Atlantic. Reserve Lene Kaaberbøl's The Boy in the Suitcase from your Community Library by clicking the link and entering your barcode information.

Stieg Larsson's worldwide bestselling Millennium trilogy has touched off a firestorm of interest in Scandinavian crime fiction. As of this writing, Larsson's now 4-year-old book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo still has enough interested readers in the Mastics/Shirley area to keep eight out of the Community Library's ten copies in circulation. Thanks in large part to Larsson, American readers now have a wide selection of translated works by other Nordic crime writers to choose from, such as Henning Mankell (also from Larsson's homeland of Sweden), Jo Nesbo (Norway), Karin Fossum (Norway), and Jussi Adler-Olsen (Denmark). If you enjoy Stieg Larsson, you might want to give these other Scandinavian noir writers a try.

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

Thrilling Series Starter: The Boy in the Suitcase

Scandinavian Crime Fiction