What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorCan't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
Roz Chast · 228 pages
In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderl
Patrimony
Philip Roth · 240 pages
In a moving elegy, one of America's most powerful writers recreates his father's ordeal as, suffering from a brain tumor, he battles with the ignominy and helplessness of old age.
Displacement: A Travelogue
Lucy Knisley · 156 pages
"In the next installment of her graphic memoir series, Displacement, Knisley volunteers to watch over her ailing grandparents on a cruise. (The book's watercolors evoke the ocean that surrounds them.) In a book that is part graphic memoir, part travelogue, and part family history, Knisley not only tries to connect with her grandparents, but to reconcile their younger and older selves. She is aided
Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death
Katy Butler · 322 pages
"An exquisitely written, expertly reported memoir and expose; of modern medicine that leads the way to more humane, less invasive end-of-life care based on the author's acclaimed New York Times Magazine piece. This is the story of one daughter's struggle to allow her parents the peaceful, natural deaths they wanted and to investigate the larger forces in medicine that stood in the way. When doctor
Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey into Alzheimer's
Andrea Gillies · 323 pages
'Keeper' is a very humane and honest exploration of living with Alzheimer's, giving an illuminating account of the disease itself. Gillies tells about the time she and her family spent living with someone with dementia, in a big Victorian house in the far, far north of Scotland.
The Old King in His Exile
Arno Geiger · 224 pages
Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me
Sarah Leavitt · 130 pages
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande · 283 pages
From surgeon and bestselling author Atul Gawande, a book that has the potential to change medicine—and lives. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should. Through eye-opening research
Welcome to the Departure Lounge: Adventures in Mothering Mother
Meg Federico · 208 pages
The adventure begins when Meg's mother, Addie, vacationing in Florida, takes a spill. At the hospital, Addie bolts upright on her gurney and yells "I demand an autopsy!" before passing out cold."One minute, she is unconscious, the next, she's nuts," observes Meg Federico in this hilarious and poignant memoir of taking care of eighty-year-old Addie and her relatively new (and equally old) husband,
Bettyville
George Hodgman · 278 pages
"A witty, tender memoir of a son's journey home to care for his irascible mother--a tale of secrets, silences, and enduring love. When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself--an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook--in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell fre
Our Cancer Year
Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner
A graphic novel which depicts Harvey Pekar's struggle with cancer.
Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's
Lauren Kessler · 272 pages
One journalist's surprisingly hopeful in-the-trenches look at Alzheimer's, the disease that claimed her mother's life. Like many loved ones of Alzheimer's sufferers, Lauren Kessler was devastated by the disease that seemed to turn her mother into another person before claiming her life altogether. To deal with the pain of her loss, and to better understand the confounding aspects of living with th
Mummy’s Little Helper: The Heartrending True Story of a Young Girl Secretly Caring for Her Severely Disabled Mother
Casey Watson · 305 pages
She'd gone to school expecting to come home again but instead she'd been picked up, told her mother was in hospital and that tonight she would have to sleep somewhere else. I was used to dealing with kids from bad situations, but it seemed inexplicable that this sweet little girl didn't have a single other place she could go.
The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
Madeleine L'Engle · 245 pages
The author describes the senility and death of her ninety-year-old mother and her own concomitant emotions and frustrations.
One True Thing
Anna Quindlen · 320 pages
A New York psychiatrist recounts her mother's death for which she was arrested. At the time, Dr. Ellen Gulden was accused of killing her mother with an overdose of morphine, a charge in part based on a high school essay in which she advocated euthanasia. By the author of Object Lessons.
Home is Burning
Dan Marshall · 304 pages
"For the Marshalls, laughter is the best medicine. Especially when combined with alcohol, pain pills, excessive cursing, sexual escapades, actual medicine, and more alcohol. Meet Dan Marshall. 25, good job, great girlfriend, and living the dream life in sunny Los Angeles without a care in the world. Until his mother calls. And he ignores it, as you usually do when Mom calls. Then she calls again.
The Notebook
Nicholas Sparks · 266 pages
A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. An achingly tender story about the enduring power of love. A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. The Notebook is an achingly tender sto
The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss in Later Life
Nancy L. Mace, Peter V. Rabins · 400 pages
When someone in your family suffers from Alzheimer disease or other related memory loss diseases, both you and your loved one face immense challenges. For over thirty years, this book has been the trusted bible for families affected by dementia disorders. Now completely revised and updated, this guide features the latest information on the causes of dementia, managing the early stages of dementia,
The Last Devil to Die
Richard Osman · 369 pages
The fourth installment in the beloved and New York Times bestselling series from Richard Osman, now streaming on Netflix “The best Murder Club book yet. . . A poignant complement to both the fair-play mystery plot and the characters’ lively humor.” —The New York Times Book Review It's rarely a quiet day for the Thursday Murder Club. Shocking news reaches them—an old friend has been killed, and a d
Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen
Jane Hawking · 483 pages
The wife of the reknowned British physicist describes their courtship and marriage, her years caring for his physical needs, his rise to prominence as a scientist and world celebrity, their bitter divorce, and later reconciliation. Stephen Hawking's first wife, Jane, relates the inside story of their marriage. As Stephen's academic renown soared, his body was collapsing under the assaults of a mo