The Years Before My Death


Book Description

How a small boy with a stammer ended up on the stage, becoming one of New Zealand's best loved comedians. In The Years Before My Death, renowned and much loved actor-director and comedy show writer David McPhail recounts his early life and what led him to pioneer the satirical TV programmes (including A Week of It and McPhail and Gadsby) for which he is famous, what drove him to perform comedy, and what was behind his desire to make New Zealanders laugh. He tells of his creative friendships with the likes of A.K. Grant, Bruce Ansley and Jon Gadsby; his encounters with former Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, the comic genius Dudley Moore, and the television networks of the day. As one would expect, every anecdote is told with insight, perfect timing and a glint in the eye.




The Death of a Nobody


Book Description

The subject of this modern classic is not a man. "It is an event," says Jules Romains, who is considered "the French Dos Passos." The event starts with the death of Jacques Godard, a man of no importance. It unfolds through his brief survival in the minds of others - the porter of his tenement in Paris, his fellow lodgers, a few acquaintances, his old father, who comes up from the country for the funeral, a young stranger who feels that the dead pass into "a great soul that cannot die." The event expresses Romains's belief in "collective beings," the famous theory of "Unanimism." In dramatizing his theory, Romains developed an advanced motion-picture technique when films were in their infancy, a technique of group portraits and sudden shifts from scene to scene that keeps this work far ahead of conventional novels. Here, Romains explores the ideas and the devices used in his twenty-seven-volume masterpiece, Men of Good Will, which André Maurois calls "the boldest attempt to describe completely his own time that any French novelist has made since Balzac."




In the Event of My Death


Book Description

They had been six teenage girls in Wheeling, West Virginia. Full of mischief. Acting wild. Having good times. And getting into trouble. They called themselves the Six of Hearts. Then one night things went to far. One of them died. The rest swore to never tell what really happened. Now, thirteen years later, someone has decided to kill the remaining Six of hearts. The first to die is Angie, a successful New York City actress. And flower-shop owner Laurel Damron, still living in Wheeling, may be next. She has gotten a chilling message in the mail. She knows a killer is watching her. But who? Only by searching the past can she uncover a haunting truth...only by looking deep with herself can she uncover a lost memory...and only by suspecting everyone she knows, does she have one slim chance of staying alive...




Top Five Regrets of the Dying


Book Description

Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.




After the Death of a Child


Book Description

For a parent, losing a child is the most devastating event that can occur. Most books on the subject focus on grieving and recovery, but as most parents agree, there is no recovery from such a loss. This book examines the continued love parents feel for their child and the many poignant and ingenious ways they devise to preserve the bond. Through detailed profiles of parents, Ann Finkbeiner shows how new activities and changed relationships with their spouse, friends, and other children can all help parents preserve a bond with the lost child. Refusing to fall back on pop jargon about "recovery" or to offer easy suggestions or standardized timelines, Finkbeiner's is a genuine and moving search to come to terms with loss. Her complex profiles of parents resonate with the honesty and authenticity of uncomfortable emotions expressed and, most importantly, shared with others experiencing a similar loss. Finally, each profile exemplifies the many heroic ways parents learn to live with their pain, and by so doing, honor the lives their children should have lived.




My Life Before My Death at Seven Years Old


Book Description

This story is about a seven-year-old boy. His father, who loved him so much, wrote this. It tells the story of my life. My name is Tommy J. I could not write this story because of my death. It is a loving story, and I hope that everyone will buy and read this very touching story—not only to yourselves but read it to your kids also. This is a story that everyone can and will enjoy. I know it wasn’t easy for my father to write this book, so let’s help make it a success.




When Breath Becomes Air


Book Description

**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** 'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful,' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal What makes life worth living in the face of death? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father. Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both. 'A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living' Nigella Lawson




In Search of Gentle Death


Book Description

Death is inevitable. But bad deaths-- accompanied by unnecessarily prolonged pain and suffering, often aggravated by immensely costly and frequently futile medical treatments-- can be avoided. This book offers clear and valuable examples of how, through frank communication with caregivers and loved ones and the use of Advance Medical Directives such as living wills, those who are facing the possibility of death in the foreseeable future, and those who help them cope, can greatly minimize or eliminate end-of-life turmoil, family dissension, and pain.




My Death


Book Description

The November 2023 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club The narrator of Lisa Tuttle’s uncanny novella is a recent widow, a writer adrift. Not only has she lost her husband but her muse seems to have deserted her altogether. Her agent summons her to Edinburgh to discuss her next book. What will she tell him? At once the answer comes to her: she will write the biography of Helen Ralston, best known, if at all, as the subject of W.E. Logan’s much-reproduced painting Circe, and the inspiration for his classic children’s book, Hermine in Cloud-Land. But Ralston was a novelist and artist in her own right, though her writing is no longer in print and her most radical painting, My Death, deemed too unsettling—malevolent even—to be shown in public. Over the months that follow, Ralston proves an astonishingly cooperative subject, even as her biographer uncovers eerie resonances between the older woman’s history and her own. Whose biography is she writing—really?




The Year of My Death


Book Description

Mark Brown, a business executive, had a vivid dream he would live until the year 2038. Months later a horrific plane crash occurs. Just before the crash, Mark grabs the arm of the passenger next to him, Howard Bowman, and tells him to hold on because he is going to live until the year 2038. At the hospital, Mark and Howard are told they are the only ones to survive. Lauren Rifkin, a tabloid investigator, finds out about Mark's dream and what he said to Howard before the crash. She and her Chief Editor, Weaver, convince Mark they can make him a major personality if they promote his dream as a premonition. The plan works, but the price of fame and fortune turns out to be higher than Mark anticipated. There are some who will benefit if they can cause him to have another near-death experience and others who want to challenge his so-called premonition by killing him before the year 2038. The Year of My Death is a thriller, but what lies beneath is the opportunity for hope.