Recommendation of the season:
Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
Excellent read! Close to home for many of us….
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession’s ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person’s last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end. Amazon
Fiction
Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim
In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected—and from this encounter unfolds a saga that spans half a century.
In the aftermath, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver’s courtesan school, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. When she befriends an orphan boy named JungHo, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets of Seoul, they form a deep friendship. As they come of age, JungHo is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence, and Jade becomes a sought-after performer with a new romantic prospect of noble birth. Soon Jade must decide whether she will risk everything for the one who would do the same for her.
From the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes. BookBrowse
The Collective by Alison Gaylin
Just how far will a grieving mother go to right a tragic wrong?
Camille Gardener is a grieving—and angry—mother who, five years after her daughter’s death, is still obsessed with the privileged young man she believes to be responsible.
When her rash actions draw the attention of a secret group of women—the collective— Camille is drawn into a dark web where these mothers share their wildly different stories of loss as well as their desire for justice in a world where privilege denies accountability. Fueled by mutual rage, the collective members devise and act out retribution fantasies via precise, anonymous, highly coordinated revenge killings.
As Camille struggles to comprehend whether this is a role-playing exercise or terrifying reality, she must decide if these women are truly avenging angels or monsters. Becoming more deeply enmeshed in the group, Camille learns truths about the collective—and about herself—that she may not be able to survive.
The Collective is about a secret society of aggrieved mothers who help each other exact revenge on the people who harmed their children. The crimes are carefully plotted and involve many other group members and are executed so that noine of them would be suspects in the collective’s crimes. Gaylin uses the ideas of maternal grief and revenge to clever andcreepy ends.
Devotion by Hannah Kent
Hannah Kent’s sumptuous novel opens in Kay, in Prussia, in 1836. The community of Old Lutherans holds secret church services in the forest, and dreams of a life free from religious persecution. Eventually, they are offered the chance of a new life in Australia – but to get there they’ll need to travel for six months on board a cramped and disease-ridden ship.
This migration story will be especially familiar to South Australian readers, as Kent’s boatload of religious refugees is closely modelled on the group of German settlers who established Hahndorf, now a popular tourist village, in the Adelaide Hills.
But at its heart, Devotion is not really about history. It’s a love story. Our heroine is Hanne, the teenage daughter of one of the community elders. Tall and awkward, she describes herself as “the cuckoo born to a songbird. The odd, unbeautiful daughter”. She doesn’t have a friend – until a new family arrives in Kay. Their daughter Thea is a kindred spirit for Hanne, and their friendship soon blossoms into something more – something that the teenagers are initially unable to name.
As Thea and Hanne make the dangerous journey to Australia, their connection deepens. And when they arrive in their new home, it blooms into something greater than them both. Within the wondrous Australian landscape, Hanne and Thea’s love becomes something mythic and eternal.
Hannah Kent is known for her dark historical novels Burial Rites and The Good People. And while there is great sadness and hardship here, this surprising novel is ultimately about beauty, nature and an epic love. I adored it. CN
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-07/best-new-books-to-read-in-november/100590898
Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner
An absolutely gripping thriller that’ll have you up all night, award-winning journalist Katherine Faulkner’s Greenwich Park is told from three perspectives. Protagonist Helen lives in a stunning Victorian house with her handsome architect husband and the two are expecting their first baby together, after years of trying. Helen meets Rachel at a prenatal class and as the story develops, it turns out that things might not be so perfect after all. Seems like there’s more than a few secrets lurking under the floorboards at Greenwich Park. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/essential-reads-jan-2022
The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller
In 1916, Sven Ormson leaves a restless life in Stockholm to seek adventure in Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year and he might witness the splendor of the Northern Lights one night and be attacked by a polar bear the next. But his time as a miner ends when an avalanche nearly kills him, leaving him disfigured, and Sven flees even further, to an uninhabited fjord. There, with the company of a loyal dog, he builds a hut and lives alone, testing himself against the elements.The teachings of a Finnish fur trapper, along with encouraging letters from his family and a Scottish geologist who befriended him in the mining camp, get him through his first winter. Years into his routine isolation, the arrival of an unlikely visitor salves his loneliness, sparking a chain of surprising events that will bring Sven into a family of fellow castoffs and determine the course of the rest of his life.Written with wry humor and in prose as breathtaking as the stark landscape it evokes, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is a testament to the strength of our human bonds, reminding us that even in the most inhospitable conditions on the planet, we are not beyond the reach of love. Amazon & BookBrowse
Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier
Lyla has always believed that life is a game she is destined to win, but her husband, Graham, takes the game to dangerous levels. The wealthy couple invites self-made success stories to live in their guesthouse and then conspires to ruin their lives. After all, there is nothing worse than a bootstrapper.
Demi has always felt like the odds were stacked against her. At the end of her rope, she seizes a risky opportunity to take over another person’s life and unwittingly becomes the subject of the upstairs couple’s wicked entertainment. But Demi has been struggling forever, and she’s not about to go down without a fight.
In a twist that neither woman sees coming, the game quickly devolves into chaos and rockets toward an explosive conclusion.
Because every good rich person knows: in money and in life, it’s winner take all. Even if you have to leave a few bodies behind.
One of the best psychological thrillers I’ve read this year, Eliza Jane Brazier’s Good Rich People is one heck of a ride. Meet the ultra wealthy Herschel family in this dark and stirring novel with no shortage of surprising twists and turns. What starts out as a game quickly devolves into chaos and rockets toward an explosive conclusion. If you enjoy this book, I recommend also picking up a copy of Brazier’s debut, If I Disappear. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/essential-reads-jan-2022
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
An absolute page turner that will have you absorbed from beginning to end. The School for Good Mothers is a powerful work of fiction from writer Jessamine Chan focused on struggling a protagonist named Frida Liu, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Frida ends up in a government reform program where the custody of her child Harriet, all she has in the world, remains uncertain. Chan’s main character must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/essential-reads-jan-2022
The Wedding Party by Liu Xinwu
On a December morning in 1982, the courtyard of a Beijing siheyuan―a lively quadrangle of homes―begins to stir. Auntie Xue’s son Jiyue is getting married today, and she is determined to make the day a triumph. Despite Jiyue’s woeful ignorance in matters of the heart―and the body. Despite a chef in training tasked with the onerous responsibility of preparing the banquet. With a cross-generational multitude of guests, from anxious family members to a fretful bridal party―not to mention exasperating friends, interfering neighbors, and wedding crashers―what will the day ahead bring?
Set at a pivotal point after the turmoil of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Liu Xinwu’s tale weaves together a rich tapestry of characters, intertwined lives, and stories within stories. The Wedding Party is a touching, hilarious portrait of life in this singular city, all packed into a Beijing courtyard on a single day that manages to be both perfectly normal and utterly extraordinary at the same time. BookBrowse
Non Fiction:
All The Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, by Rebecca Donner.
This book about Mildred Harnack, an American woman sentenced to death by the Nazi regime in 1943, is a family history too: Donner is Harnack’s great-great-niece. It is also a story of code names and dead drops, a real-life thriller with a cruel ending. Donner pieces together Mildred’s life from fragments, sifting through government archives, interviews, photographs, diaries and letters. Szalai called it an “astonishing” book that conveys “what it felt like in real time to experience the tightening vise of the Nazi regime.” Amazon
The Boiling River: Adventure and Discovery in the Amazon (TED Books) by Andres Ruzo
When Andrés Ruzo was just a small boy in Peru, his grandfather told him the story of a mysterious legend: There is a river, deep in the Amazon, which boils as if a fire burns below it. Twelve years later, Ruzo—now a geoscientist—hears his aunt mention that she herself had visited this strange river.
Determined to discover if the boiling river is real, Ruzo sets out on a journey deep into the Amazon. What he finds astounds him: In this long, wide, and winding river, the waters run so hot that locals brew tea in them; small animals that fall in are instantly cooked. As he studies the river, Ruzo faces challenges more complex than he had ever imaged.
The Boiling River follows this young explorer as he navigates a tangle of competing interests—local shamans, illegal cattle farmers and loggers, and oil companies. This true account reads like a modern-day adventure, complete with extraordinary characters, captivating plot twists, and jaw-dropping details—including stunning photographs and a never-before-published account about this incredible natural wonder. Ultimately, though, The Boiling River is about a man trying to understand the moral obligation that comes with scientific discovery —to protect a sacred site from misuse, neglect, and even from his own discovery. Amazon & TED talk
In the Shadow of the Mountain by Silvia Vasques- Lavado
Like Wild before it, this is Silvia Vasquez-Lavado’s account of taking a group of abused young women on an epic trek to Mount Everest base camp before climbing the mountain herself and how this experience healed her own trauma of alcoholism, repression and abuse (out 3 February).
https://www.stylist.co.uk/books/33-must-read-non-fiction-books-for-2022/598573
Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her page-turning, pulse-raising memoir following her journey to Mount Everest.
A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent― the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains and death’s close proximity―woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest.
“The Mother of the World,” as it’s known in Nepal, allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn’t go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her. It was never easy. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking, and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But, there were also moments of peace, joy, and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward.
In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of heroism, one which awakens in all of us a lust for adventure, an appetite for risk, and faith in our own resilience. Amazon
Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life by Delia Ephron
Delia Ephron, bestselling novelist and You’ve Got Mail screenwriter, has written one of life’s most jaw-dropping memoirs. Recovering from the death of her husband, Delia wrote an op-ed for the New York Times and was contacted by Peter, who’d she’d been on a date with 54 years earlier (set up by her late and beloved sister Nora). The pair fell in love in true romcom style, and then Delia was diagnosed with leukemia… (out 14 April) https://www.stylist.co.uk/books/33-must-read-non-fiction-books-for-2022/598573
Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas by Harley Rustad
In the vein of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, a riveting work of narrative nonfiction centering on the unsolved disappearance of an American backpacker in India—one of at least two dozen tourists who have met a similar fate in the remote and storied Parvati Valley.
For centuries, India has enthralled westerners looking for an exotic getaway, a brief immersion in yoga and meditation, or in rare cases, a true pilgrimage to find spiritual revelation. Justin Alexander Shetler, an inveterate traveler trained in wilderness survival, was one such seeker.
In his early thirties Justin Alexander Shetler, quit his job at a tech startup and set out on a global journey: across the United States by motorcycle, then down to South America, and on to the Philippines, Thailand, and Nepal, in search of authentic experiences and meaningful encounters, while also documenting his travels on Instagram. His enigmatic character and magnetic personality gained him a devoted following who lived vicariously through his adventures. But the ever restless explorer was driven to pursue ever greater challenges, and greater risks, in what had become a personal quest—his own hero’s journey.
In 2016, he made his way to the Parvati Valley, a remote and rugged corner of the Indian Himalayas steeped in mystical tradition yet shrouded in darkness and danger. There, he spent weeks studying under the guidance of a sadhu, an Indian holy man, living and meditating in a cave. At the end of August, accompanied by the sadhu, he set off on a “spiritual journey” to a holy lake—a journey from which he would never return.
Lost in the Valley of Death is about one man’s search to find himself, in a country where for many westerners the path to spiritual enlightenment can prove fraught,
even treacherous. But it is also a story about all of us and the ways, sometimes extreme, we seek fulfillment in life. Lost in the Valley of Death includes 16 pages of color photographs. Amazon & https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/essential-reads-jan-2022
No. 204 is Going Home by Marie Lindstrom
Marie Lindstrom was ready to take on the world. After months of research poured into planning a birthday trip to remember, the mother of two beamed with happiness as they touched down in Thailand. And she was positive they were bound for a trek full of lasting memories… until the tsunami wave hit.
Terrified by the prospect of losing all she held dear, Marie struggled to keep her head above water after being swept underground and enshrouded in darkness. But even after the catastrophe passed and she embraced what remained, the guilt accompanying her survival proved staggering.
Would the soul-wrenching pain tear her apart or be miraculously transformative?
No. 204 is Going Home is a heart-shaking memoir about the unbreakable strength of motherhood. If you like honest depictions of disaster, raw emotional transformations, and moving accounts of healing, then you’ll love Marie Lindstrom’s sail through calamity. Amazon
Thank You for looking at my book recommendations.
Summaries of the books are from: ABC.net, BookBrowse, Amazon, Daily Hive, Stylist, Thrillist, or me!
Tracy
Tracy's 2 Cents 