Hello, Mortals Book Club
We can't wait to dive into exploring these books with you. Our book club aims to highlight themes of end of life. For locals, head to Bainbridge Island's Eagle Harbor Bookstore to get your copy (with a small discount when you say it's for our book club), or order it here on our very own Hello, Mortals bookshop.org shop.
The Wild Edge of Sorrow offers hope and healing for a profoundly fractured world—and a pathway home to the brightness, pains, and gifts of being alive.
Introducing the 5 gates of grief, psychotherapist Francis Weller explores how we move through the waters of grief and loss in a culture so fundamentally detached from the needs of the soul.
Profoundly moving, beautifully written, this book is a balm for the soul and a necessary salve for moving together through difficult times. Grounded in ritual and connection, The Wild Edge of Sorrow welcomes each grief with care and attention, opening us to the feelings, experiences, and sacred knowledge that connect us to each other and ultimately make us whole.
by Francis Weller
For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away.
As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,” his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.
by Anita Hannig
"Copies of this book should be in every doctor's office in the country, to educate patients and doctors themselves!" --Diane Rehm, interviewer & narrator of the PBS documentary When My Time Comes
An intimate investigation of assisted dying in America and what it means to determine the end of our lives.
In this groundbreaking book, award-winning cultural anthropologist Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans who go to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own death. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying--a legal option now available to one in five Americans.
by Anita Hannig
PREVIOUS BOOK:
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies
Everyone has questions about death. In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers the most intriguing questions she's ever received about what happens to our bodies when we die. In a brisk, informative, and morbidly funny style, Doughty explores everything from ancient Egyptian death rituals and the science of skeletons to flesh-eating insects and the proper depth at which to bury your pet if you want Fluffy to become a mummy. Now featuring an interview with a clinical expert on discussing these issues with young people--the source of some of our most revealing questions about death--Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? confronts our common fear of dying with candid, honest, and hilarious facts about what awaits the body we leave behind.
by Caitlin Doughty
PREVIOUS BOOK:
Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying
In this moving and compassionate classic--now updated with new material from the authors--hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years' experience tending the terminally ill.
Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts--of wisdom, faith, and love--that the dying leave for the living to share.
Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.
by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelly
PREVIOUS BOOK:
The Art of Dying Well
The Art of Dying Well will help you live well as possible for as long as possible and adapt successfully to change.
This down-to-earth manual for living, aging, and dying with comfort, meaning, and even joy is inspired by the medieval death manual Ars Moriendi, or the Art of Dying. It’s the definitive update for our modern age.
by Katy Butler