Mad Mabel: Book Review

 

Published 1 Oct. 2025

Oh, this was a fun read. I usually do not read thrillers because I find them populated with flat characters and formulaic plot lines. However, I very much enjoyed keeping company with Mad Mabel and a host of other characters. 

Hepworth does a great job fleshing out a complex protagonist.  I happen to think people in late life make very interesting main characters because of the decades of personal experience that inform their personalities. 

Mabel lives in a neighborhood with a handful of interesting people, including a tween named Persephone who insists on forming a friendship with our snarky titular character.  As we get to know Mabel as an older adult, we also get a series of flashbacks that tell out how Mabel earned the moniker "Mad."  When she was younger, she was adjacent to a number of deaths, and she was implicated in them even though she was just a child. 

Over the length of the book, we get some answers about what happened in years gone by, but we also learn more about contemporary Mabel and her neighbors.  It was both suspenseful and heartwarming--which is an interesting mix. 

Maybe I will pick up a few more thrillers that have older adults as the protagonist. 

Related: 

Books on Aging

The In-Between: Book Review

 

Published 13 June 2023

Hadley Vlahos is a hospice nurse.  She goes by Nurse Hadley on social media--in part because she is divorced from Chris Vlahos and now married to Brett Fairley. And I know this because Hadley includes a lot of personal information on her TikTok, Instagram and YouTube accounts. 

Her book does contain a lot of good information about hospice in the form of describing her interaction with a handful of terminal patients and their family members. The best thing about her book is her willingness to share her own journey supporting these people. She also describes them richly as complex and sympathetic people. 

However, the biggest weakness is also her book shifting into memoir at points. I have read and reviewed about fifty books about death, dying, and bereavement. Each one does have a contribution to make to the topic; however, if you are a "just the facts, ma'am" type of reader, Hadley's book will be a bad fit. I do think, however, she makes the topic particularly accessible to younger generations.  

End-of-life concerns is not just an issue for older adults. Death effects everyone. 

Related: 

Books on the Dying Process

The Secret Scripture: Book Review

 

Published 2 April 2008

I have not read very many books set in Ireland, so when I found a review of  The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry on Goodreads, I decided to reach back to a book published in 2008. It's notable that this book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I was also interested in a protagonist, who was a centenarian, Roseanne (Rose) Clear McNulty, reviewing events from the first quarter of her life. 

Memorial Days: Book Review

Published
29 January 2022

I have read three other books by Geraldine Brooks (People of the Book being my favorite), and I had the chance to meet her at a book signing at Watermark Books and Cafe in Wichita, Kansas. Consequently, when I saw that she had a nonfiction book out, I picked it up. 

The occasion of Memorial Days is heartbreaking: her husband Tony Horwitz died unexpectedly on Memorial Day 2019, and this was obviously devastating form Brooks. As many writers do, she worked through her grief by writing about him, his work as a journalist and book author, and their relationship. Additionally, this caused her to stop writing for a time. However, Tony had expressed the importance of her work in progress, so she finally pushed herself to finish the book--which was Horse, which she managed to publish in 2022--despite her persistent grief. 

Remember: Book Review

 

Published
23 March 2021

I had the opportunity to read Lisa Genova's novel Still Alice prior to the release of the film based on her fictional account of a woman living with early onset Alzheimer's. Because she has a doctorate in neuroscience, Genova's novel was informed by science.  

I make an effort to read books about cognition -- fiction and nonfiction, expected age-related changes in cognition and disease-related changes. My octogenarian step-father is living with Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, which includes dementia, and my octogenarian step-mother is living with dementia (vascular? Alzheimer's? mixed?). Consequently, when I saw that Genova wrote a nonfiction book about memory--Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting (2021)-- and then bought the hardback so that I could reread parts if not all of her description of how human memory works. 

Three Days in June: Book Review

 

Published on
11 Feb 2025

I have been reading Anne Tyler's novels since the 1980s, and I am delighted that she is still publishing. Her main characters are often middle aged adults or older. I have joined several online sites for discussing books, and most of the novels have protagonists who are 12 to 30.  I have to overtly look for novels featuring protagonists who are midlife or older. (I am very helpful when someone in these Facebook or Instagram groups asks, "Do you know of any books featuring older protagonists?") 

Here is a novel that features a 61-year-old protagonist. 

When the Cranes Fly South: Book Review

 

Published in English
19 August 2025

This book uses a technique that helps readers have increased compassion for older adults experiencing their decline. I chose this book among candidates selected by Goodreads for earning a virtual bookmark for debut author. Because this was already translated from Swedish into English, I though that it must be a good book for the publisher to go to that expense. 

I am glad that I made this selection! When the Cranes Fly South is among my favorite reads for 2025 so far. 

Lisa Ridzén shows us more than one perspective about the main character, Bo, an older adult living by himself with his dog.  Bo is starting to experience some frailty so his adult son--Hans--sets up caregivers to assist Bo with meals, cleaning, and personal hygiene. Primarily, we read imagined conversations that Bo is having with his wife, Frederika, who has recently been moved into town to live in a care center given her growing memory issues. However, Bo's conversations alternate with notes left by four paid caregivers and notes left by the son.   

Oh, the discrepancy between Bo's view of himself and the caregiver's views are strikingly different. 

Tom Lake: Book Review

 

Published 1 Aug 2023

Oh, Tom Lake was a quiet yet powerful narrative. I am crying softly because Ann Patchett did such a good job weaving together characters, images, setting, and themes.

I am a middle aged woman, and this is a book about Lara, a middle aged woman, taking an inventory of her life by doing an oral life review for her three daughters. It's about the choices we make in life--particularly when we are in our 20s--and how those choices set us on a path for the decades to come.

Remarkably Bright Creatures: Book Review

 

Published 3 May 2022

In her 2022 novel Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt creates a story of people who are looking to belong, looking for what is lost, and finding connections in unexpected places.  And the story is facilitated by an intelligent, observant octopus named Marcellus. 

Marcellus lives in the Sowell Bay Aquarium where a widow named Tova works.  Tova is entering late life and dealing with some challenges to her health. She is also spending a lot of time reviewing her life and wrestling with some regret.  She does not have a lot of social connection; however, she meets a shopkeeper from Scotland and conducts some awkward low-level flirting with him. 

Tova's story alternates with Cameron, a man leaving his twenties without having a solid job or strong social connections. His mother abandoned him, and he has had trouble dealing with his mother's shortcomings so that he can progress with his own life. 

I admit that I was more interested in the octopus and in Tova than I was with Cameron initially. I feel as though I have observed a lot of young people who are drifting and lost. However, I finally found a way to connect with Cameron and care about his well being. This happened when he (mild spoiler alert) got a job at the aquarium where Tova works and Marcellus lives. 

It's a gentle read that deals with some heavy themes: love, loss, family, aging, purpose, regret, forgiveness and more.  It's 300 plus pages, but it was still a quick, engaging read. 

Related: 

Books on Aging

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: Book Review

 

Published 15 Mar 2012

I don't know how this book escaped my attention, but I saw a trailer for the film based on Rachel Joyce's 2012 novel, so I decided to read it.   The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry describes the journey that pensioner Harold Fry takes from the southwest of England (Devon) to the northeast (Northumberland). This is no small matter. It's a trek of over 500 miles. 

Fry kind of stumbled into this exertion.  He had intended just to mail a letter to a former co-worker, so he went out his front door without his phone and with the inadequate pair of deck shoes on his feet.  He finds himself lost in thought, so he decided to walk to the town post office, only to decide to walk the entire distance to see his former co-worker, Queenie Hennessy, who is in a hospice dying of cancer. 

The book does describe the English countryside and a number of characters whom Fry meets. However, the primary task of the novel is a life review for Fry. He spends those hours walking thinking about his life: his childhood, his career in sales at a brewery (from which he has retired), his marriage, his son David.  

Outlive: Book Review

 

Published 28 March 2023

Peter Attia writes a book that is a little too technical (statistics and biochemistry) for the lay reader, but I highly recommend it anyway. 

Why? 

He promotes the idea that people can work on longevity much earlier in their lives by adopting healthy lifestyle choices decades before one becomes an older adult.  Many people wait until they have symptoms of chronic diseases before they make changes. 

Attia implores people to start decades early so that they can not just have a long life span but a long health span. 

Longevity runs in my family, but I do not want to spend the last 20 years of my life on the couch. 

The Book of Charlie: Book Review

Published 23 May 2023

While visiting my little rural library, I saw The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David von Drehle, so I picked it up. 

von Drehle does not just chronicle the life of a centenarian; he spends about a third of his efforts contextualizing the events of Charlie White's life that spanned from 1905 to 2014.  While reading about Charlie's adventures, character, and achievements, von Drehle discusses national trends as well as those that were more regional (to the Midwest primarily) and some that were city specific (to St. Louis and Kansas City, for example). Because I lived for 8 years in Kansas and 7.5 years in SW Indiana (2 plus hours east of St. Louis), I was particularly interested in Charlie's years in those cities. 

We get to observe life on the frontier in the 1910s and 1920s, life during the Depression, war time service for WW1 and WW2, and the development of medical techniques that transformed medicine dramatically during Charlie's practice from the family doctor with the black bag making home visits with limited ability to intervene to Charlie performing state-of-the-art techniques for aesthesia. 

I liked von Drehle's technique of switching from the particular to the universal and back again.  Yes, Charlie participated in some trends and was influence by the Zeitgeist of several eras; however, he also was adventurous and innovative--having adventures (such as riding the rails and being an entrepreneur by being a doctor to an apartment building as well as plunging patients into newly purchased horse feeding troughs as a way to make open heart surgery possible).  

If you want a guided tour through 100 plus years of American history (with some overseas adventures here and there), ride along with Charlie as von Drehl narrates.

Related: 

Books on Aging

In Love--A Memoir of Love and Loss: Book Review

 

Published 8 March 2022

Because I teach a class called Death, Dying, and Bereavement, I like to read a few titles on that topic every year. 

Because I had already read a novel by Amy loom, I decided to pick up a copy of her nonfiction book In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, published in March of 2022 by Random House. 

Critical Age Theory: Book Review

Published 29 May 2022.

I have been reading widely about aging since 2010.  

A few books take a comprehensive view of the aging process, titles that I often recommend to people who are not gerontologists so that they can get The Big Picture. 

Ten Books: An Essential Library on Aging

I have found another title to add to my list of must reads about aging. 

Mario D. Garrett, PhD has written a jeremiad of sorts about the many institutions that prey on older adults, capitalizing on the vulnerability many face in late life. 

To create a context, I suggest readers first watch the 2020 film, I Care A Lot, directed by J. Blakeson and starring Rosamund Pike. I watched the film the year it was released and found it interesting as an exaggeration, a dramatization of the state of eldercare in the 21st Century. 

Two years after viewing that film, Garrett's book has me rethinking I Care a Lot as being less a niche genre black satirical comedy thriller and more from the genre "based on true events."  I had already planned on mentioning this film in my review before I saw that Garrett references I Care A Lot (2020) himself.   

Watch the film, but if you going to choose one, read Garrett's book.  

Critical Age Theory: Profiteering From the Final Stages of Life (2022) describes the ways for-profit companies and even the government and non-profits fail older adults when they are the most frail of mind, body, and finances. 

I teach college courses on aging (gerontology), and this book would work well to alert my students to the unethical practices that are inherent in the system and challenging for individuals to change at their level. 

The chapters are as follows (with a staccato summary/response for each chapter). 

(Here is my Goodreads review, which I wrote chapter-by-chapter as I read. It's grittier than my blog review.) 

Introduction: This sets the tone with Garrett as the lone voice in the wilderness, asking people to look at the larger systems controlling aging and to spend less time blaming elders and their family caregivers and less time wagging fingers at those paid to offer support directly to older adults.  The problem goes higher up, and it goes deep into the structures of 21st century power structures.  Here is one example that gestures to system rather than the individual as the root problem:

"We make it easy for . . . commercial practices to continue as we tend to see only individuals that commit fraud or harm. As with elder abuse, we personalize the interaction. however, in most cases, the institutional make up--what we euphemistically refer to as their business model, or business culture--determines how individual workers behave within an agency. Since the business model dictates workers' hours, duties, and responsibilities, it is logical to examine the business model being used" (9). 

(I do not remember Garrett using the word "hegemony," but academics use this--and other words--to study the network of power that is pervasive and difficult to combat.)

1. Drugs: Drugs are often improperly prescribed and almost always overpriced.  

*Each chapter ends with a "Playbook" that unearths the game plan that seems to drive decisions based on profitability over patient-centered / customer-centered / client-centered service. One of the items from the "Playbook" on the chapter "Drugs" is this: "Price medications on the basis of what people can afford rather than what they cost to develop and manufacture" (37). 

     

Ten Books: An Essential Library on Aging

Over the past decade, I have read over 150 books about aging. The topics have ranged from physical to metaphysical with just about everything in between. 

For my full list of books read, see this page. 

I realize that scrolling through this list is a bit like drinking from a fire hydrant. Consequently, I decided to compile a list of the books that I judge as essential reading for anyone who is aging or anyone supporting another person who is aging. 

Global Aging, 2nd Edition: Book Review

Published 13 December 2019.

I earlier this year, I selected Springer's Global Aging textbook in order to teach a class on global aging for Fall 2021. This 414 page book contains a lot of information about aging by using examples from dozens of countries. 

Here is the Table of Contents: 

1. Our Aging World 
2. The Study of Global Aging 
3. Demographic Perspectives on an Aging World 
4. Aging Environments 
5. Health Patterns and Behavior 
6. Health Care Systems 
7. Long-Term Services and Supports 
8. Older Workers 
9. Retirement and Pensions 
10. Families 
11. Caregiving 
12. World Religions and Aging 
13. Global Aging and Global Leadership

Additionally, each chapter concludes with one or two essays that are--for the more part--focused specifically on one country. 

On with the Butter: Book Review

 

Inspired by her mother's resilience and sense of adventure, Heidi Herman has written On with the Butter: Spread More Living into Everyday Life. (2020, Hekla Publishing). 

The gist of the book can be summed up in an Icelandic saying that translates roughly to "On with the Butter!" It's similar to the British saying, "Carry on," but contains a bit more zest, particularly as embodied by Herman's Icelandic mother. 

Disclosure: I have received a complimentary copy of Herman's book in exchange for a fair and honest review. 

Heidi has a long career as a writer of various genres, but this book was part of a collaboration with her mother to enumerate nearly one hundred activities that can help older adults remain engaged and joyful. 

The book, however, is not just a list. It conveys an outlook on life that is an invitation to find happiness in the moment rather than being bogged down with one of life's many challenges. 

Even though I am many years younger than Ieda, the author's mother, I appreciate the suggestions for engaging in life when some people might suffer depression due to role loss and struggle with how to re-engage in life. 

I still teach classes at two universities; however, I experienced a slump when all of my children launched in August of 2019. True, I only have two children, but having them both fire me as their mother was quite a shock. 

Instead of looking back at what is missing, I am inspired to engage more fully in the moment by reading narratives about Iada's adventures followed by checklists for having an adventure of my own.

For example, in Chapter 5, "Take the Scenic Route," Herman describes a road trip she and her mother took through some of the smaller roads that connect I-80 and I-25. In doing so, Ieda convinced her daughter to stop at the Mormon Handcart Museum that documented the 1,300 mile trip of handcart pioneers. 

Books about Epidemics and Pandemics

I've decided to channel some of my nervous energy about COVID-19 into reading books about pandemic directed at the lay reader. I do read news stories and scientific updates, but it's hard to see the forest from the trees right now. 

By looking at the work of epidemiologists narrating how they have addressed various outbreaks over the last 100 years, I can learn something about how people respond to contagions that cause epidemics and pandemics. 


Here's my list in reverse chronology.

The Plague: Book Review

Published in 1947.

Albert Camus wrote The Plague, a novel about a plague occurring during the 1940s in Oran, an Algerian town.

I decided to spend the month of April 2020 reading this novel, given the way that COVID-19 aka coronavirus has dominated the attention in most venues--from international news to dinner table conversations.

The book has 30 chapters, so I was able to focus on a chapter a day.

Reading a fictional account gave me the opportunity to gain a little distance from my own experience. 

The two main narrators of the novel--Dr. Rieux and Mr. Tarrou--record their response to Oran's plague.

Camus' novel does not strive for historical or scientific accuracy. Instead, it is an exploration of the meaning of suffering, the meaning of life, and how people create purpose.

For a more detailed summary, see my Goodreads Review, which is more about describing each "tree" (chapter summaries) and not so much about "the forest." Also, the GR review contains over two dozen direct quotes. 

Tomie dePaola and Strega Nona

Strega Nona first published in 1975.

Yesterday, the world lost a great storyteller-illustrator-artist, Tomie dePaola, who was 85. He died due to complications from a fall. I have probably read about a dozen of his books to my children when they were little, but that's just a small portion of his life's work.

"His writing career spanned over 50 years during which he worked on more than 270 books. Close to 25 million copies of his books were sold worldwide, and were translated into over 20 languages." Source. 

Over the years, I have thinned out my books, so I went from owning about five of dePaolo's books to owning just one: the first Strega Nona book, published in 1975. He went on to write ten more books that feature this wise, ageful, Italian grandmother.