Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Tuesday Intros ~ The End Of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe




Every Tuesday Diane @ Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter, First Paragraph where we share the first paragraph or two of a book we are reading or thinking about reading soon.  Feel free to grab the image and participate.



My Tuesday Intro pick is The End Of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. This is a true story about a son and his mother who start a "book club" which brings them together as his mother is dealing with cancer treatments. I am listening to this on audio and it has me hooked. The author is my age so we grew up during the same era but our mothers were very different. I'm a bit envious that he could have such a wonderful connection to his mother through books. 

Here are the first three paragraphs from Two Roads Books:


"We were nuts about the mocha in the waiting room at 
Memorial Sloan- Kettering’s outpatient care center. 
The coffee isn’t so good, and the hot chocolate is worse. But 
if, as Mom and I discovered, you push the “mocha” button, 
you see how two not- very- good things can come together to 
make something quite delicious. The graham crackers aren’t 
bad either.
The outpatient care center is housed on the very pleasant 
fourth fl oor of a handsome black steel and glass offi ce building in Manhattan on the corner of 53rd Street and Third Avenue. Its visitors are fortunate that it’s so pleasant, because they spend many hours there. This is where people with cancer wait to see their doctors and to be hooked up to a drip for doses of the life- prolonging poison that is one of the wonders of the modern medical world. By the late autumn of 2007, my mother and I began meeting there regularly. 
Our book club got its formal start with the mocha and one 
of the most casual questions two people can ask each other:
“What are you reading?” It’s something of a quaint question 
these days. More often in lulls of conversation people ask, 
“What movies have you seen?” or “Where are you going on 
vacation?” You can no longer assume, the way you could when 
I was growing up, that anyone is reading anything. But it’s a 
question my mother and I asked each other for as long as I 
can remember."


What do you think? Would you keep on reading 
or move on to something else?





10 comments:

  1. Yes, Bonnie --- read more -- this book was wonderful!!!!

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  2. I have a copy of this book that I haven't had a chance to start yet. I heard the author speak last year at a Random House author breakfast and he was wonderful. He told lovely stories about his mother and family. I really need to move this one to the top of the pile. Enjoy it!

    Here's my Tuesday Intro: http://www.bookclublibrarian.com/2013/05/first-chapter-first-paragraph-13-and.html

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  3. Wow! Now I have to read this one...it sounds great.

    Here's MY TUESDAY MEMES POST

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  4. Wow - I love the way this book starts. I'm drawn right in. I really must read this one.

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  5. I've heard of this book and would read it. It sounds so inspiring. Here's Mine

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  6. This one is on my wish list!

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  7. I would definitely read more. My mother and I both like to read, although we have different tastes in books. The excerpt you shared has inspired me to ask more often when I talk to my mom about what she's reading.

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  8. I've read some great reviews of this one, so yes, I would keep reading!

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  9. Impressive, insightful, and humorous. She is someone I wish I'd met. Truly a doer not a talker. Her family's love for her speaks volumes as well.

    Maycee Greene (SEO in Olympia)

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