Being Mortal. Atul Gawande

Being Mortal. Atul Gawande

I was not clear of the book’s narrative going into the read. Through a minimum of looking it clearly centers on learning of death and dying from the surgeon point of you. I should've read in advance from the New York Times review which stated :

In Gawande’s words:

The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need.

"Gawande wants us to know that the tragedy of old age and death cannot be fixed by modern medicine, so we better find some other way to deal with it. He divides his book into eight beautifully written chapters that follow the trajectory from independence to death. Being Mortal, the most personal book he has written, ends with the long dying of his own father."

Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to the very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine technology and strangers.

'Veneration of elders may be gone but not because it is been replaced by veneration of youth. It's been replaced by veneration of the independent self.'

The task in healthcare is beyond ensuring health and survival is to enable well being. The questions being:

• What is your understanding of the situation and it's potential outcomes
• What are your fears and what are your hopes
• What are trade-offs you're willing to make you are not willing to make
• What is the course of action the best serves this understanding

( we do not want to endure long pain and short pleasure. Yet certain pleasures can make enduring suffering worthwhile. The peaks are important and so is the ending. Or the more familiar analogy for me - enjoy a few vistas - they make the mountain train ride worth the cinder smoke)

Good questions indeed.

A thoughtful yet sobering read. Atul is an engaging author., who takes us where we might not desire but where we all need 

The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett

The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett

Having recently read The Lost Book of the Grail by the same author; I anticipated reading, this, his debut and famous novel more than I did. It weaves the tale of our protagonist's two passions 1) collecting and restoring rare books 2) his wife.

The former tells the story of Shakespearean manuscripts and forgeries with a few too many leaps of imagination. It moves along with connections and circumstances that don't always feel plausible. As to the latter, a little too much is not left to the imagination as to the passion he and his wife share.

An ok read, not a great read. If I were to chose one of his books to read it would be The Lost Book of the Grail and skip this one.

The Lost Book of the Grail by Charlie Lovett

The Lost Book of the Grail by Charlie Lovett


No gratuitous sex!
No gratuitous violence!
Oh my!

A fun and addictive tale carried along through diverse components: books vs digital documents, libraries, Arthurian legend, Holy Grail, British history, hidden codes , religious rites and daily practices, with quirky characters, friendship and simple romance. All that bundled into one little book which my father would have delighted, as did I. The narrative bounces back-and-forth through the middle ages establishing the providence of relics; and an unlikely pairing of a very prototypical British professor and lover of antiquity and his digitally skilled brash American female counterpart in search of answers to their grail quest.

Arthur forever comfortable in a library is dismayed by his students disaffection of tangible books.
"Students didn't even read books anymore, thought Arthur. They dispensed with design and layout and cover art and illustrations and reduced reading to nothing but a stream of text in whatever font and size they chose. Reading without books, thought Arthur, was like playing cricket without dressing in white. It could be done, but why?"

Unexpectedly, the book also weaves in and out of perspectives of belief and what it means to believe.
"The gifts of God are rarely what we expected"
(Its really not the type of book where I'm looking for great quotes and I don't want to bother with the typing up of long quotes that illustrate my point - trust me.)

My favorite review of the book came from kirkus reviews:
"A solidly built, innocently bookish diversion with a distinct Masterpiece Theater flavor"

Song of the Lion Anne Hillerman

Song of the Lion Anne Hillerman

I appreciate Anne continuing her fathers legacy in writing "Song of the Lion". It feels very connected and consistent to his (Tony Hillerman) style and content and character in Southwest Native culture based, Leaphorn/Chee, mystery series. If you enjoy the genre, as do I, its a fun quick read.

My father and I shared an enjoyment of reading this series, among others, together. My father passed about the same time as Tony Hillerman and I assumed no new books in the series, no more sharing with a kindred spirit. Reading this book brought a smile to my soul. I reflected on our joint reading escapades: sharing a book, sharing a turn of a phrase, sharing a new word, sharing a well told story, and/or sharing a new thought - all edify. In part why I write these reviews - to share.

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Eggers projects a fresh look at totalitarian government from what we read recently with Churchill and Orwell. His novel is cast in the near future, where we, the every day public, willingly, peer pressured or coercion submit all, ALL, private behavior, speech or thought to the public eye. Through an uber-cyber network all things are linked together under the watchful eye of the theoretically beneficent entity (read monopolistic corporation) called the Circle. The sad ending is the world no less depressing for the individual than if WW2 had been lost. A totalitarian regime that eliminates all individuality.



Enjoyed his writing, enjoyed the story but in candor I skipped major parts of the book due to Egger relying too much on sex to carry a major theme in the story. I went to online notes and summaries, after bailing about half way thru, and then read the end of the book. Unlike Homage to Catalonia where the carnage of war was wearing on me, yet I went back and finished the book; this time I just couldn't. Too little time, too many good things to read, to get stuck in the mud. Interesting premise, in tune with my examination of totalitarianism, but he could have cleaned it up.

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

I recently read a biography of George Orwell and noted to myself that I had never read

Homage to Catalonia , which was one of his earlier successes. Orwell went to Spain to report on the Civil War , he had already experienced WWI intimately, and so it wasn't surprising that he joined the fight against the Fascists. Herein he describes the war and Orwell’s experiences are verite, rèal - despondent , dreary and stinky.

Though I enjoy how he wrote and I embrace many of his philosophies - emotionally

and physically . However the graphic nature of his writing puts me too in his mindset and war. It is a space I don't need to spend significant time . I don't need a book to be yippee skip-pee - just not in realistic modern war.

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."

"I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards."

"I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan"

"If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: 'To fight against Fascism,' and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: 'Common decency."

"all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs."

            This last quote, his prescient quote, regarding World War II.

I       I  went back and finished the book after all- it has its good moments.