The End Of Your Life Book Club

This book hit a special chord for me.  My Mom is not well.  She had a bout with breast cancer and now she is suffering from Parkinson's. She has good days and she has bad days.  One thing my family and I have always shared is our love for reading.  Many evenings growing up the television would be off and everyone could be found in their own special corner reading a book.  Often a book would be the topic of conversation at dinner.  Books were always passed around between family members.  Sometimes more than one family member was reading the one copy of the book in the house and there was a small scuffle to gain ownership of the book. The adults always won. Saturday was library day.  We would stock up for the week.  Before I went to sleep I use to read at least an hour a night.  I still read before bed but often it is for several hours since sleep often eludes me.

Sometimes my Mom does not talk all day.  She just sits in a chair and reads.  I am glad she is able to do that.  It is hard to see a once vibrant woman reduced to walking with a walker and spending the majority of her day in a chair.  Two questions still get a response from my Mom.  Have you read anything good lately? or What are you reading?  We certainly do not have the lengthy conversations we use to have about books but it is nice when she responds. One of the things my Mom continues to do that drives me nuts is to read the end of the book before she is finished.  I never understood, being an avid reader, why you would bother to read a book if you know how it ends.  The best part of the book is to enjoy the journey the author is creating and to see if you can follow the twists and turns.  Also I like debating the outcome of the book with others to see if they saw the ending coming or if they felt it was an appropriate ending for the book.

I hope the question What are you reading does not become obsolete.  I am lucky to be part of a book club and I am lucky that many of my friends like to read.  But many don't.  Some would rather just sit back and watch TV or watch a movie.  Those are great things to do but they should not take the place of reading a good book.  Books take you into a special world.  They expand your imagination.  They make things less boring.  They provide entertainment and information.  There I have said my piece!

That is why I picked up The End of Your Life Book Club.  It is about a woman with stage 4 cancer spending time with her son towards the end of her life.  They formed a "book club" to have something to talk about while he accompanied her to her chemo sessions.  The books they read were just a springboard to topics about their lives and the choices they made.  If you are part of a book club than you know the drill.  Sometimes you talk a lot about a book and sometimes you talk a little about the book.  Sometimes the topics in the book get people talking about their own experiences.  It is great to hear their stories.  I remember for one of our book club meetings we were reading The Perfect Storm.  During the discussion one of the book club members revealed that she had a family member who went out on a fishing boat and was lost at sea.  She said she would be walking and see him in a crowd of people.  When she got closer she realized it wasn't him.  Being lost at sea did not give her the closure she needed to realize he was gone. 

The other great thing about discussing a book is getting a different perspective or interpretation of the book.  My Mom sees things based on her life knowledge and experience so did his.  His mother was a professional woman which in the 50's and 60's was ground breaking.  Books provided a connection to his Mom and I feel books provide me with a connection to mine.  It is nice to still have that connection.

It is a really good read.  Try it out.