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End of Your Life Book Club

by Will Schwalbe
End of Your Life Book Club

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  • Synopses & Reviews
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  • Read an Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780307739780
ISBN10: 0307739783
Condition: Standard


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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

“What are you reading?”

That’s the question Will Schwalbe asks his mother, Mary Anne, as they sit in the waiting room of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2007, Mary Anne returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan suffering from what her doctors believed was a rare type of hepatitis. Months later she was diagnosed with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, often in six months or less.

This is the inspiring true story of a son and his mother, who start a “book club” that brings them together as her life comes to a close. Over the next two years, Will and Mary Anne carry on conversations that are both wide-ranging and deeply personal, prompted by an eclectic array of books and a shared passion for reading. Their list jumps from classic to popular, from poetry to mysteries, from fantastic to spiritual. The issues they discuss include questions of faith and courage as well as everyday topics such as expressing gratitude and learning to listen. Throughout, they are constantly reminded of the power of books to comfort us, astonish us, teach us, and tell us what we need to do with our lives and in the world. Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying.

Will and Mary Anne share their hopes and concerns with each other — and rediscover their lives — through their favorite books. When they read, they aren’t a sick person and a well person, but a mother and a son taking a journey together. The result is a profoundly moving tale of loss that is also a joyful, and often humorous, celebration of life: Will’s love letter to his mother, and theirs to the printed page.

Review

"In a heartfelt tribute to his mother, Schwalbe illustrates the power of the written word to expand our knowledge of ourselves and others." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"This touching and insightful memoir [will] appeal to readers of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Last Lecture, but also to people who love delving into books and book discussions....While it is a story about death, it is mostly a celebration of life and of the way books can enrich it." Booklist (starred)

Review

"With a refreshing forthrightness, and an excellent list of books included, this is an astonishing, pertinent, and wonderfully welcome work." Publishers Weekly (starred)

Review

“A graceful, affecting testament to a mother and a life well lived.” Entertainment Weekly

Review

“Schwalbe...highlights not just how relevant but how integral literature can be to life.” The Washington Post

Review

“[This] book is robust with love and laughter.” Chicago Tribune

Review

“Not only a son’s heartfelt tribute to [his mother’s] courage and grace but vivid testimony to the enduring power of books to create meaning out of chaos, illuminate values, and connect us with each other.” The Boston Globe

Review

“A book that is expressly about books, about the purpose and pleasures of books, and the ways they connect us even as we read them as a solitary pursuit....[It’s also] about, in part, the consolations we can find in art, books in particular, as we struggle to face the terrible awareness of our own mortality.” The Plain Dealer

Review

“An account of growing up in a bookish, artistic family, and a touching portrait of his energetic mother....The [reading] choices that emerge are not a bucket list but an engagingly eclectic mixture of current and vintage, literary and commercial.” The New Yorker

Review

“Schwalbe’s enthusiasm turns out to be contagious. As I was reading I found myself scribbling titles on a piece of paper so that I could order the volumes he and his mother cared about. Schwalbe is not just an avid reader, he is also an advocate, a cheerleader, a disciple.” Rachel Shteir, The New York Times

Review

“Touching and rigorously honest, this memoir is wise about the role reading plays in our lives and deaths.” Slate

Synopsis

A profoundly moving memoir of caregiving, mourning, and love between a mother and her son--and about the joy of reading, and the ways that joy is multiplied when we share it with others.

"A graceful, affecting testament to a mother and a life well lived." --Entertainment Weekly, Grade A

During her treatment for cancer, Mary Anne Schwalbe and her son Will spent many hours sitting in waiting rooms together. To pass the time, they would talk about the books they were reading. Once, by chance, they read the same book at the same time--and an informal book club of two was born. Through their wide-ranging reading, Will and Mary Anne--and we, their fellow readers--are reminded how books can be comforting, astonishing, and illuminating, changing the way that we feel about and interact with the world around us.

Synopsis

An Entertainment Weekly and BookPage Best Book of the Year

During her treatment for cancer, Mary Anne Schwalbe and her son Will spent many hours sitting in waiting rooms together. To pass the time, they would talk about the books they were reading. Once, by chance, they read the same book at the same time — and an informal book club of two was born. Through their wide-ranging reading, Will and Mary Anne — and we, their fellow readers — are reminded how books can be comforting, astonishing, and illuminating, changing the way that we feel about and interact with the world around us. A profoundly moving memoir of caregiving, mourning, and love — The End of Your Life Book Club is also about the joy of reading, and the ways that joy is multiplied when we share it with others.


About the Author

Will Schwalbe has worked in publishing (most recently as senior vice president and editor in chief of Hyperion Books); digital media, as the founder and CEO of Cookstr.com; and as a journalist, writing for various publications including The New York Times and the South China Morning Post. He is on the boards of Yale University Press and the Kingsborough Community College Foundation. He is the coauthor, with David Shipley, of Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better.

Reading Group Guide

1. Does this book have a central theme? What is it?

2. Why does Mary Anne always read a book’s ending first? How does this reflect her character?

3. Early in the book, Will writes, “I wanted to learn more about my mother’s life and the choices she’d made, so I often steered the conversation there. She had an agenda of her own, as she almost always did. It took me some time, and some help, to figure it out.” (6) What was Mary Anne’s agenda?

4. Mary Anne underlined a passage in Seventy Verses on Emptiness, which resonated with Will: “Permanent is not; impermanent is not; a self is not; not a self [is not]; clean is not; not clean is not; happy is not; suffering is not.” Why did this strike both of them as significant? What do you think it means?

5. Throughout the book, Will talks about books as symbols and sources of hope. How has reading books served a similar function for you?

6. While reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, Will and Mary Anne discuss three kinds of fateful choices: “the ones characters make knowing that they can never be undone; the ones they make thinking they can but learn they can’t; and the ones they make thinking they can’t and only later come to understand, when it’s too late, when ‘nothing can be undone,’ that they could have.” (41) What kind of choices did Mary Anne make during her cancer treatment? Did she or Will make any of the third type?

7. Mary Anne especially liked a passage from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson: “When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?” (96) Why do you think this moved her so much? What did it mean to Will?

8. How does religious belief help Mary Anne? How do you think it might have helped Will?

9.

Mary Anne doesn’t believe her travels to war-torn countries were brave: “I wanted to go to all those places, so how could that be brave? The people I’m talking about, they did things they didn’t want to do because they felt they had to, or because they thought it was the right thing to do.” (167) In what ways is Mary Anne brave during her cancer treatments? Does she ever come to think of herself as brave?

10. Will is amazed by his mother’s ability to continue her efforts to fund the library in Afghanistan even while facing a death sentence, until he realizes that “she used her emotions to motivate her and help her concentrate. The emphasis for her was always on doing what needed to be done. I had to learn this lesson while she was still there to teach me.” (194) Did Will learn? What makes you think so?

11. Why did Mary Anne become so intent on certain things happening: Obama’s election, David Rohde’s safe return? Will talks about his own “magical thinking” several times in the book—what form do you think Mary Anne’s took?

12. “We’re all in the end-of-our-life book club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one.” (281) How did this realization affect Will’s final days with his mom?

13. After she dies, Will looks at Mary Anne’s copy of Daily Strength for Daily Needs, next to the bed. He believes this quote from John Ruskin was the last thing his mother ever read: “If you do not wish for His kingdom, don’t pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it.” (321) How did Mary Anne work for it throughout her life? Do you think Will found solace in this passage?

14. Several times in the book, Will talks about eBooks versus their physical counterparts. Why does he prefer one to the other? Does Mary Anne agree? If you read this book on an eReader, how do you think it affected your experience?

15. Which of the books discussed by Will and Mary Anne have you read? Which do you most want to read?


5 3

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (3 comments)

`
JessicaJ , December 20, 2013
This is a beautifully written book. So many levels of value: From the relationship of the parent & adult child, to the dynamics of heir lives that the book covers, to the books they read. A book to own & re-read again & again.

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jksquires , July 21, 2013 (view all comments by jksquires)
I'm often skeptical of books that are said to be inspirational, but this book is truly inspiring in every sense of the word. The author's mother, Mary Anne, was an incredible woman with a passion for life and lived her life in a manner that helped so many. Both Will and his mom shared a life-long love of books and his time spent with her during the last months of her life sharing books and discussing their impact is a testament to the bond they had. A friend of mine who is a small town library director recommended this volume to me and it's the best book I've read this year--I've read some very good ones--but this is the most important by far.

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LC's , January 23, 2013
Some one in our book club read this book, we looked at the title and info and really got excited about it. Needless to say this is our next book club choice

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780307739780
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
06/04/2013
Publisher:
Vintage
Pages:
352
Height:
.80IN
Width:
5.10IN
Thickness:
1.00
Copyright Year:
2013
Author:
Will Schwalbe

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$10.50
List Price:$16.95
Used Trade Paperback
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