Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an excruciatingly sad book and I seriously cried almost all the way through it. The strange part was that I still really liked it. Taylor Jenkins Reid really captured the pain and peculiar thoughts of grief.

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The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book because Mary Anne Schwalbe is my new hero. To be half the person she is would probably be a wild success. Also, I love books about books! My reading list has been revised. I've read some of the books mentioned but I hope to reread this after reading more of its recommendations. Will Schwalbe's mother is dying and there is a little wisdom about the end of life in it, but it's mostly a book about how to live your life well.

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The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book even though it was sad because it's fundamentally a very hopeful book: a fantasy about the rules of life after death and a fantasy about the rules of life on earth. There were some insightful lines about grief. Overall, it dragged on beyond the point where it was creating value, and the main character is an underdeveloped everygirl.

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The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This reminded me a lot of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking except I liked it better because I could palpably feel the love and loss of Alexander's husband Ficre. Alexander's writing is wonderful, and to read this book is to understand love on this earth a little better.

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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really engaging account of a young woman obsessed with death who takes a job in the mortuary and cremation industry. Doughty also answers a lot of typical questions about the care of a body after death. I've lost loved ones and I was really curious about some of the things she explains. I strongly agree that mourners should have more time to sit with the body immediately after death. A tradition of sitting with the unaltered body afterwards would be highly beneficial to some of us.

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The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you have experienced the kind of loss that I have experienced- and I know a lot of people have- it can nonetheless feel like no one really gets it. Well here is proof of the transformative power of death, life, and love packaged in a fairy tale. I'm wrecked like someone tore my chest cavity apart. Thank you, Alice Hoffman.

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Mala by Melinda Lopez

Mala by Melinda Lopez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is so unbelievably good. This is the (Cuban-American) Boomer/ Gen X Death of Ivan Ilyich. Also if you want an approximation of many of the things (but definitely not all) I personally experienced with my dad's and my mother's deaths this is eerily close. My parents were very young though, my dad was 61 and my mom was late 50s. They very much did not want to die and were very scared. Both fought to the end, though my mother did agree to hospice in what turned out to be her last month. She didn't call me "mala" but it was strongly implied any time I tried to restrict any of her choices which I avoided a great deal.

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The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams

The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After by Julie Yip-Williams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I lost both of my parents to cancer, my dad when he was 61 and I was 31, and my mom when she was 60 and I was 38. Since losing my dad I’ve read a lot, including a number of these end of life books. The good ones come from people who either gave thought to how to live life before being diagnosed or read a lot of literature throughout their life. The worst are a hodgepodge of memoir and random “deep” thoughts with no organizing theme.

In this case, Yip-Williams life story is somewhat interesting though spread out throughout the book. I’m especially interested in her solo-legally-blind travels. Otherwise, I would only recommend this to people who want to mine the book for colon cancer specifics, which admittedly might be useful.

Also, the whole thing about her husband's hypothetical second wife was a bit much. Granted I'm not dying of cancer, but I really love my husband, and I imagine (and hope) that if I died he'd marry someone completely awesome. The last thing I'd want to do is leave them with a list of musts and can'ts to make them feel guilty about their decisions when I'm not even around. Wanting your kids to be raised a particular way is completely understandable, I'd want them to be loved by a stepmom more than I'd worry about their music classes. And I'd even want them to be happy enough to be able to call her mom. Real love is about them, not me.

For me, the best part of the book might be her husband's epilogue. It's truthful and full of selfless love. It also provides a pretty good analysis of the reality of a bad cancer diagnosis and a long terrible illness.

If you want end-of-life wisdom I recommend: Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl who survived the Holocaust, The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs who died of cancer, and Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich (about the annoying positivity forced on cancer patients and others). Or you know, actual books about philosophy, religion, and literature generally.

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How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick by Letty Cottin Pogrebin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These are important issues to consider and I'm really glad someone wrote this book. I would have appreciated better organization and more science about what actually makes people feel better.

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How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really interesting book. Though it's central theme is psychedelics, it's topic is really consciousness, the experience of being, the fear of death, willpower, and mental illness. The book was well-written as Pollan never disappoints. I definitely found new information and the book definitely challenged some of my assumptions about the world.

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Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Riveting! I have no personal interest in mountain climbing (though I like hiking- the flatter the better) and certainly, I have no interest in climbing Mount Everest, but this book kept me turning the pages as quickly as I could.

The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because it left me wanting a more literary or philosophical examination of life and death. My first thought was it's crazy to climb Mt. Everest. But my second thought was - well, none of us are making it off this planet alive. Maybe the issue with climbing Mt. Everest is more an issue of age and family situation. But there was no real exploration of any more meaningful exploration of the choice to scale the mountain though there was a fair bit of discussion about the duty the people on the mountain did or didn't owe to each other, though most of that had a somewhat indirect quality about it.

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Artful by Ali Smith

Artful by Ali Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Maybe not the best place to start with Ali Smith. I liked the language a lot and she made her grief beautiful and absurd in a way that I loved. But the essays are strange and disjointed. I also didn't really like Oliver Twist so Smith's comments on the book throughout left me a bit cold.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This story is so magical and moving. The story deals with so many interesting things. Benjamin suffers so much judgment based on his appearance from both those who don't understand him and even those in his family that do. I am not certain what to think about his family's uniform but peculiar reaction of blaming him for something he can't help. There are so many things about his life cycle that aren't different despite the inversion because babyhood and extreme old age have some things in common. In any case, the story gives you a lot to think about. The end of the story really rips your heart out though.

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Death, Dying, and the Afterlife by Mark Berkson

Death, Dying, and the Afterlife: Lessons from World Cultures by Mark Berkson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This covered a variety of topics about death without going into a great deal of depth on any of the topics. For example, Berkson gave an entire lecture each to the Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist, and Confucian concept of death and death rituals (6 lectures total). I see why that's important but the course is already a summary of the concept and experience of death in human society. Throwing in summaries of all the world's religions - mostly information of which I was already aware- didn't leave a lot of time for everything else about death. I also felt like the lecture on vegetarianism- again, something I've read about at length in other more through sources- was really not to the point.

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The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book wrecked me. The author is a wonderful writer, daughter, wife, and mother. She is 37-39 in the course of this memoir. She goes through the loss of her mother to cancer and describes it in great and accurate detail. I lost my dad to cancer when I was 31, and my mother to the same cancer when I was 38, and the details really resonated- particularly with what I went through with my mother.

And she gets sick with terminal cancer at the same time, and ultimately loses the battle. As a mom, I can really feel her sense of devastation over leaving her kids. My heart really aches for her sons, and I hope wherever they go in life people are always extra kind to them. I can also relate to her protectiveness of her husband- forbidding him to get a vasectomy in case he wants more children with his next wife. That's real love.

She says so many beautiful, brilliant, and accurate things in the book. I borrowed the book but I plan to buy a copy so that I can underline basically everything.

“I am reminded of an image...that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more -- sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.”

“My friends ask a new kind of question: How is today? I hope the pain is manageable today.”

“Sometimes I'm sad about everything; the way my grilled cheese sandwich tastes, how nice my socks feel, a song John is playing in the kitchen. One time he puts on this goofy Loudon Wainwright song that was on a mix tape I used to listen to during my commute from the boys' school in Bethesda back into the District when we were newly married and everything was about to begin and it makes me burst into tears about the shortness of everything.”

Amen, Nina. Sounds like you would have been an amazing person to know and with whom to talk.

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A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is not the sexy Buddhist nun story it promises to be on the first few pages. That was a disappointment. It is also not the realistic story it promises to be for the first 60% of the book as it descends into magical realism madness. But I fell in love with the characters and any book that weaves mindfulness and physics into a narrative about time is likely to win me over.

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The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bureaucracy in society = loss of humanity. I agree 100%.

My mother died this year, and my father already died 7 years ago. Do I get to mourn my mother and my complete loss of parents at my leisure? No. Everything related to dealing with my mother’s death is a nightmare. Most recently I’m fighting with Cobra because they put in their system that she died a month before she did, even though they had a death certificate that says the correct date and they know it is their error. I expect that this error will cascade into many more errors as I get rejected payments for her end of life care. This is just one of many problems I've encountered with the bureaucracy of death.

Additionally, I got an incorrect tax bill this year because my former boss filed his end of the taxes incorrectly. I have to jump through several hoops to correct errors other people made. This began while my mother was literally on her deathbed and has still not been resolved. Being powerless against the machinery of the IRS has a special irony this year, in this the year of President Trump.

Do I want to come back after my death and haunt all these institutions, customer service representatives, politicians that do nothing to regulate this, and society in general? You bet I do.

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It's Okay to Laugh by Nora McInerny Purmort

It's Okay to Laugh by Nora McInerny Purmort
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is wonderful. It's honest, raw, and hilarious. The next thing I'm going to say is going to sound like it's not that hilarious, but I swear it is. In rapid succession she had a miscarriage, her father died, and her husband died of cancer. Having been through something similar with both of my parents dying of cancer (they were in their early 60s, I was in my 30s), I could relate to a lot of her feelings and appreciate the sometimes dark humor. Obviously, that's still totally different than what she went through, but she has a whole section on how grief is lonely because it's so different for everyone, and yes, that part is also spot on. Reading the book is like having a friend that really gets it go through the bad stuff with you.

I might be a little OCD, but the chronology in the book was crazy and I couldn't get a handle on what happened when. I'm still not totally sure when the last part of the book took place chronologically, but for me, that was the only small flaw in this nearly perfect memoir.

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The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a good simplification and modernization of Buddhism to make it less religious-y for modern readers. (Ie., never mind about rebirth and hungry souls, and what not.) It's in a question-and-answer format which is more effective for this subject than it sounds like it would be.

That said, I think it's a stretch to say the Bible or Christianity is referencing these "enlightenment" frames of mind. Also, the small section on menstruation, not necessary, and hard to take from a man that really has no idea what he's talking about. Wouldn't have loved that part even if a woman wrote it though.

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Option B by Sheryl Sandberg

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is about going through and surviving grief, so in some ways, it came at the perfect time for me. I agree with so much she says about how grief feels and how friends and family should help.

I think part of the issue with this book might be that her view of grief is still pretty limited. She tries to include stories of the immense grief that other people suffer and especially those with less financial advantages than her, but it feels like she still doesn't totally get it in places. For example, while she acknowledges that not everyone can afford to keep their home, pay for childcare in the face of grief, etc. she doesn't meaningfully address these problems. And she appears oblivious to some things that are not in the mourner's control. For example, my friends can't afford to drop everything in their own lives to come help me. Nor do I have other family to step in. She's lucky in so many ways she doesn't even realize. She also only briefly touches on the effect of multiple tragedies on a person. She only briefly touches on the loss of meaning in life. (Maybe Tolstoy for that issue.) She doesn't even seem aware about the possibility of clinical depression hijacking grieving.

Finally, I get that she has to be positive to sell books and also so she doesn't drive people to despair. I get that if she wants to keep her job she has to still appear enthusiastic about her corporation's performance, but who actually cares? Why is this even in a book about grief? No really, who will care a 100 years from now that she worked really hard and made a lot of money? Someone might care that she wrote a wonderful book about grief that helped people, but the focus on the former makes the latter miss the mark a bit.

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