BIBLIOTHERAPY: FINDING HELP IN BOOKS
Using reading materials as a resource for dealing with life’s challenges – “bibliotherapy”– is the theme of our recent Library Bulletin Board, titled “New Year – New Hope.” There you’ll find titles addressing depression, including I Want to Change My Life, How You Can Survive When They’re Depressed, and Undoing Depression. For coping with grief, consider resources like Motherless Daughters, Please Be Patient, I’m Grieving, and No Heartbeat. These books, and many more on similar sensitive topics, are available for borrowing from our Reformation Church Library.
CELEBRATE NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK!
National Library Week is April 9-15. You can celebrate it in three easy steps:
• by visiting our library at Reformation
• by checking out a book or DVD
• by telling others about it, in person, by tweet, by
Facebook post.
FEATURED CD: In This Mountain, By Jan Karon
Audio Book: 6 CDs (6-1/2 hours),
Read by John McDonough, whose narration is rich and full of feeling for the characters.
Throughout her Mitford novels, Jan Karon writes to give readers an extended family. In this, her seventh book, we find Father Tim and Cynthia back in Mitford after a stint on Whitecap Island. While Father Tim doesn’t like change, he finds he dislikes retirement
even more, so he decides to take on a difficult ministry. He begins to think he likes the change – until an unexpected event propels him on a journey that shakes his faith, his marriage, and the whole town of Mitford. We also meet up with old friends: Doley, Joe
Ivey, Fancy Skinner and Percy.
FEATURED BOOK:
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
From its first pages, When Breath Becomes Air pulls its readers into the brilliant and compassionate mind of an outstanding neurosurgeon and scientist, Paul Kalanithi. His memoir reflects on his journey as a rising star in one of the most challenging of medical fields, neurosurgery and his search to find meaning as a doctor in a highly complex modern medical environment. When millimeters make the difference between surgical success and catastrophic failure (brain impairments or even death), Kalanithi struggles to bring ethical and compassionate healing to his patients.
Out of the blue, just as Kalanithi is about to embark on his promising post-residency career, he and his physician wife must face a stunning turn of events – his own battle with stage IV lung cancer. Kalanithi continues working as long as he can but finds that the necessary down-time to deal with his illness provides the gift of time to write this memoir. He bravely faces his own mortality while trying to apply all the lessons he learned as a healer to his new position as cancer patient. The memoir is ultimately finished by his wife who includes her own poignant reflections of her husband’s all too brief life and her hope for the future with their young daughter. This beautifully written memoir is for anyone interested in gaining new perspectives of medicine as a healing art and of the fascinating reflections of a man who faced his illness with grace and profound understanding.