Books for Living

I read and really enjoyed Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club, and so I knew I would also read and probably enjoy his most recent book about books, Books for Living.  I read it in May and did enjoy it but not quite as much as the End of  Your Life.  I think that probably is because there were fewer books in the more recent book that I was familiar with, less to relate to, I suppose.  More importantly, there were fewer books that Will discussed that I felt compelled to read myself.

For example, he talks a lot about Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living, a book and author I had not heard of, and while he mentions some interesting ideas that Yutang promotes, there was a bit of a disconnect for me as it didn't really sound like a book I would like.

I have read E.B. White's Stuart Little but not in decades and I found it a distant second to the incomparable Charlotte's Web.  It touched me so little that I never foisted it upon my own children. It was interesting to read about why Will liked it so much and found in Stuart a role model, but I don't feel motivated to reread it myself.

I did resonate with his love of David Copperfield--I share a deep love for that book as well, but we each got something quite different from it.  I see Steerforth as one of Dickens' amoral villains, and Will found him flawed but not horrible and dismissed his betrayal of Little Emily more easily than I found palatable.

We were definitely on common ground with Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. I absolutely love this book, and I was totally in sync with Will's admiration for Lamott's voice in this book. I've read it at least three times, and am looking forward to reading it again.

The one book that I did come away from this reading wanting to read myself was Anne Morrow Lindberg's Gift from the Sea. The structure of it, as described by Will, appeals to me.  I find her intriguing and Will's discussion of her life as that of a celebrity wife as well as author was interesting.

I might also read Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener, if only because the basic idea of a person refusing to leave the premises after he's fired surfaced in other story lines recently and I got to brag about knowing "the source" of that plot point.

What I really liked most about Books for Living, however, was the memoir part of the book.  Will talks about his life as a young gay man in the 70s and 80s, how he was personally affected by the AIDS epidemic.  We are roughly the same age, and the books and movies and other trappings of life during this time were familiar and real to me.  I like the idea of talking about your life in the context of the books that shaped you and helped you find your place and space in the world.  For both Will and me, books provided role models, and reading created purpose and structure.

In the end, it doesn't matter that I haven't read many of the books that shaped Will.  I feel richer having read about the books that matter to him. I think that might be his point after all.  We both value our reading lives, and part of the enjoyment is discussing books, those I've read and those I haven't.

The End of Your Life Book Club

I read about The End of Your Life Book Club shortly after I finished The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, and got on the list for the audio version at the library, since I was in the mood for another book about books.  Having read it and enjoyed it, I'm still in the mood for books about books...so I'm on the prowl for another likely candidate.

The End of Your Life Book Club is a memoir by Will Schwable, who recounts the time he spent with his mother Mary Anne Schwable during the last two years of her life, while she was dying from pancreatic cancer.  He spends a lot of time with her during her chemo treatments and they decide to have their own book club--sharing books, discussing them, and using these discussions as a springboard for discussions about how to live, how to die, how to raise a family, find love and meaning in your life, and give of yourself to your friends, family, and the world.

I found his disclaimer at the beginning of the book critical to remember whilst reading it--this book is about his experience of being with his mother while she was dying.  He acknowledges that it wouldn't and couldn't match the experience that his father or sister or brother had with his mother at the same time.  This was important to me because like all memoirs this one is about Will, with his mother as the context in which he recounts his story.

I loved reading about the books that Will and Mary Anne read and discussed.  Some were books I've read recently and loved (Olive Kitteridge, People of the Book, Brooklyn, and Crossing to Safety),  some are books that have figured deeply in my own life (The Hobbit, Gone With the Wind, The Story of Ferdinand,  and The Diary of Anne Frank), some that I've read and remembered and thought about (The Year of Magical Thinking, The Lord of the Flies, and Traveling Mercies).  There were quite a few that I had never heard of (Will and Mary Anne read many more books by authors who are neither American nor British), and quite a few on my to read list.  I ended up have to skip sections where I feared spoilers might spoil a book for me.  Surprisingly, Will and Mary Anne loved The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo--a book I've dismissed as pop-culture but am now considering reading.  The first book I'll be reading that Will and Mary Anne loved is The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

Also surprising to me was that Mary Anne was a read-the-end-first type of reader.  This helped Will and Mary Anne in discussing a book she might not have finished because she already knew the ending.  While I as a reader acknowledge that the journey of reading a book is what I relish, I cannot imagine reading an ending before I get to it by reading the entire book or story that precedes it.

I did read a pretty long thread on GoodReads about how some readers ended up not liking Mary Anne at all. They saw her as controlling, domineering, and rigid, despite her philanthropic work that she continued almost to the very end of her life.  I have to give Will the benefit of the doubt her--he clearly loved and admired his mother and his book about the time he spent with her at the end of her life is one of the most beautiful tributes I can imagine a son paying to a mother.

For me, however, much as I found Will and Mary Anne's journey towards her death compelling to read about, I liked the book talk in the book most of all.  I write a blog and I read blogs because I love to talk books.  If you're in the same camp, then The End of Your Life Book Club is definitely a treat.

My one quibble with it is that the title makes me uncomfortable.  I thought about giving this book to my own 91-year old mother, but I don't want to imply to her that I think the end is near, which I actually don't think!

If you're interested in taking a look at the list of books that Will and Mary Anne read and/or discuss in the memoir, there is a list on GoodReads.