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

Showing posts with label suggestions. Show all posts

Armchair Travel: Top Picks from Bookpage

Bookpage, a monthly newsletter available for free to MMSCL patrons, recently published their list of "Top 5 Armchair Travel Books." If you'd like to get away without leaving the comfort of your own home, here are their suggested reads.

Looking to 2011 & beyond

At the Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library's annual staff meeting today, library workers discussed their vision for the future of our library. Join the conversation! Many of you participated in the library use survey this October, but if you missed it or if there's anything else you'd like to add, here's your chance. Besides the great fiction discussed on this blog, what else would you like to see at your community library? Leave your suggestions as comments!

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