One of the most touching and inspirational things I've ever read. if you haven't read it yet, put it on your to-read list. ( )

The books that the author and his dying mother read together during her final years really aren't the point of the book. It's a memoir of her remarkable life and a recounting of how she and her family and friends handled her cancer diagnosis all the way to the end. If you ever think you'll be in this position and wonder how you will/should deal with life before the inevitable end, this is a good book about this family's experience. There are other books on the topic, of course, but can you ever have too much information to help you navigate this sad, stressful situation.
A touching passage: When you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.
Also: Referring to a friend, Bob .... (He) remains for my family the perfect model of how you can be gone but ever present in the lives of people who loved you, in the same way that your favorite books stay with you for your entire life, no matter how long it's been since you turned the last page. ( )

Will Schwalbe has written a touching tribute to his mother, Mary Anne Schwalbe. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2007. Will accompanied her to appointments and chemotherapy sessions. They were both readers, so during this time, they discussed books. Eventually, this evolved into a two-person “book club” and they started to intentionally read and discuss a particular book. I enjoyed their discussions and observations about life in general. His mother sounds like a lovely, altruistic, compassionate person. A story of a dying mother is, of course, very sad, so make sure you are in the right head space if you decide to read it. ( )

In 2007, Will Schwalbe's beloved mother was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, and further tests soon showed that it was "treatable but not curable". This is a moving memoir of how a mother and son who love books use shared reading experiences as a way of dealing with this terrible situation, and the impact of this on their relationship.

I was nervous of reading it precisely because it's quite close to home. I would recommend it because it is as much a story of the life of a really interesting woman, and of her relationship with her adult son, as it is about death.

Also, it's about books, reading them and talking about them, what's not to love about such a book? Schwalbe himself writes that like any bookclub, he and his mum discussed the books they shared in different levels of detail, and sometimes the conversation shifted away from the book entirely.

The End of Your Life Book Club didn't necessarily make me want to try all the books discussed, but it is a very moving memoir, and I think the "end of your life bookclub" might well be an idea that others who have a life limiting or condition, or who love someone who does, could borrow.

All the books Will Schwalbe and his mother read and discussed for the bookclub are listed in an appendix at the end.

Received through the Amazon Vine programme and reviewed on 21 March 2013. ( )

Will Schwalb had a remarkable mother in Mary Ann Schwalb. She was a powerhouse, who lived a life that was full and complete, and what better thing can you say for a life, long or short, than that it was well-lived. One of the things this mother/son duo shared was a love of books and sharing them with one another, and this memoir is, among other things, a memorial to the reading they did together during the last two years of Mary Ann’s life.

There were moments in this novel that were such a mirror for the loss of my own mother that they were hard to read. I found myself sitting, once again, at her bedside, struggling with how to say the things I was thinking without seeming to give up on the days that we had left with one another. I felt the pain of the parting and the exuberance of having been given this time for goodbyes, at having had time together at all, at having been blessed with one another for all those glorious years.

This book is nothing if not personal and heartfelt. It is a story of sorrow, but it is much more a celebration of life. It is a journey worth sharing, and as a Bibliophile, I found it a celebration of books as well, some I knew and some I did not. With books having so much influence over my own life, it was easy to understand the importance that the written word had for these two individuals.

“We all have a lot more to read than we can read and a lot more to do than we can do. Still, one of the things I learned from Mom is this: Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying. I will never be able to read my mother’s favorite books without thinking of her—and when I pass them on and recommend them, I’ll know that some of what made her goes with them; that some of my mother will live on in those readers, readers who may be inspired to love the way she loved and do their own version of what she did in the world.

We live in the books, and the books live in us, for as Schwalbe observes, “We're all in the end-of-your-life book-club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one.
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