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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Such an incredible book on the date of human lives, death, hopen, and regrets. Will recommend to everyone!!!
I was really looking forward to reading this book, and put it off because I assumed it was going to be a real tear jerker, unforuntaly while this book is not badly written, it is lacking heart.
Heel mooi boek. Allereerst het gegeven dat een zieke en stervende moeder met haar zoon een boekenclub heeft, vind ik al heel bijzonder. Daarnaast is het fijn geschreven, vind ik de moeder af en toe irritant, maar ook zo ontzettend wijs en met een groot hart voor iedereen. Sommige boeken die besproken worden, zou ik willen lezen, maar de meesten bevatten gruwelijke details die ik nu liever mijd.
Great for book club discussion. Got lots of ideas for future reads.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Sweet, personable, touching memoir. A son and his vibrant, elderly terminally ill mother start a book club, and chronicle all the books for readers. The horrors of pancreatic cancer are interwoven with observations about life, family, writers, global affairs, dying and hope.
Although the book initially seemed a bit slow to me, I grew to love the author and his mother through the course of reading it. From the start, though, the MSKCC waiting rooms were familiar to me and I came to realize that I'd met Mary Anne's oncologist, Dr. O'Reilly, when she spoke about pancreatic cancer at a NYC FORCE meeting several years ago. For these reasons, as well as having lost my own mom to cancer shortly after the author lost his, I feel a connection to him. Of course, all the "book talk" was wonderful, and I've added several volumes from the book's list to my own to-read list.
Will Schwalbe and his mother Mary Anne seem like lovely people, and I really wanted to like this memoir about how their bond grew stronger over books while Mary Anne was undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer. However, like other reviewers have mentioned, I couldn't get past the excessive name dropping and privileged lifestyle that makes this feel a bit...too much. I also feel that the "book club" aspect was a bit gimmicky (not to say that it wasn't real or a meaningful part of the mother-son relationship) but there could have been more about the actual books, why they were drawn to them, etc. It's also possible that I am not in the right head space at the moment for a cancer memoir.
I really enjoyed this one. It didn't always discuss the books as much in depth as I would have liked, but it also didn't give any major plot points away for books that I haven't yet read. The best part to me was when discussing a book on mindfulness and gratitude, the author is reminded that so often we look at what is wrong with our lives and we forget the many things going right. A book reminds how being thankful creates its own joyfulness. These insights and more on meditation were worth the book for me.
Schwalbe isn't really an amazing writer, and his mother, a kind and shining example of service, is not really all that remarkable in the grand scheme of things. But as someone who lived through this with my father, I was interested reading someone else's take on the experience. At times it was a bit too precious, but it's hard to fault the writer for lionizing his own mother.
One of the reviews for this book was very angry that it got published because the reviewer felt there were way too many memoirs like this that got published because someone knew someone. The subjects and their experiences were not important enough to the reader. She went on to talk about her mother who appears to have a had an extraordinarily horrible time growing up. But I didn't pick up this book because I thought it might be an extraordinary story with amazing characters. I was just hoping for a human experience with some book lovin' thrown in there for good measure. As I mentioned, I wanted to read this to get someone else's version of the experience. I can't recall who said it, but there's a quote that basically states (paraphrasing): "we read so that we know we are not alone." That is what this book does.
Schwalbe isn't really an amazing writer, and his mother, a kind and shining example of service, is not really all that remarkable in the grand scheme of things. But as someone who lived through this with my father, I was interested reading someone else's take on the experience. At times it was a bit too precious, but it's hard to fault the writer for lionizing his own mother.
One of the reviews for this book was very angry that it got published because the reviewer felt there were way too many memoirs like this that got published because someone knew someone. The subjects and their experiences were not important enough to the reader. She went on to talk about her mother who appears to have a had an extraordinarily horrible time growing up. But I didn't pick up this book because I thought it might be an extraordinary story with amazing characters. I was just hoping for a human experience with some book lovin' thrown in there for good measure. As I mentioned, I wanted to read this to get someone else's version of the experience. I can't recall who said it, but there's a quote that basically states (paraphrasing): "we read so that we know we are not alone." That is what this book does.